The slasher sub-genre is a beloved and enduring type of horror movie, but after decades and decades of masked killers murdering horny teens, you’d be forgiven for wondering how much meat is left on the bone. There are only so many ways you can reinvent the wheel, right? In a Violent Nature, a new movie out now in US theaters, suggests otherwise, as it takes a fresh stab at the slasher genre and offers something new for horror fans.
For In a Violent Nature to stand out among slasher movies today is saying something, as the crowded genre is increasingly looking for ways to differentiate itself. John Carpenter’s Halloween wasn’t the first slasher but it codified many of the tropes, and movies since then have been trying to carve their own niche. The Scream films made the slasher movie meta, for instance, and in recent years we’ve had a wave of high-concept movies that add other genre elements to a standard slasher plot. Happy Death Day added a Groundhog Day time loop, with Freaky it was a Freak Friday-type body-swap, and Totally Killer time travelled back to the ‘80s with shades of Back to the Future. Those movies are all, at minimum, fun, but the shtick is beginning to get old. Not the case with In a Violent Nature.
The Canadian horror film, which was written and directed by Chris Nash, blends the slasher genre not with some other intense or exciting type of movie but with the polar opposite. Filled with very long tracking shots, ambient nature sounds that are so pleasant they verge on ASMR, and moments of stillness, In a Violent Nature is slow cinema. Its minimalist, leisurely, documentarian style is only occasionally broken by a few of the gnarliest kills you’ve seen in a horror movie of late.
Familiar by design
The plot of In a Violent Nature, as well as most of its thinly sketched characters, are familiar by design. Some teenagers rent a cabin in the woods for a weekend of drinking and hooking up. They accidentally unleash an evil force in the form of 'Johnny' - a hulking undead, unstoppable killer with a backstory and presence not unlike Jason Voorhees. He emerges and begins to hunt down his victims with a methodical, brutal patience. He even has his own distinctive costume and weapon of choice, à la the Ghostface mask, hockey mask, chainsaw, or Freddy Krueger’s glove. He wears an antiquated lumberjack firefighting mask and has a hook on a chain that was previously used to haul lumber for his kills.
The premise is familiar but the execution — both figuratively and literally — is not. The teenagers are thin characters because we don’t spend much time with them, even by the standards of slashers with their stock, disposable victims. Rather than spend too much time getting to know them, In a Violent Nature instead spends lots of quiet time with Johnny as he walks through the Canadian woods. It’s inaccurate to say the movie is all from the killer’s POV, as the camera does cut away for certain scenes and isn’t limited strictly to his perspective. And yet it feels that way, at times, because most slasher movies have us spending time with the victims, getting to know them until the killer suddenly pops out. Much of In a Violent Nature is just Johnny hiking through nature until he stumbles upon somebody to kill, perhaps overhearing some helpful exposition for the audience while he’s at it.
New ways to kill
If In a Violent Nature’s big innovation is flipping the script from normal slashers in making the victims and the backstory feel ancillary compared to eerie, methodical vibes, worry not: when it's time to kill, the movie finds new ways to dismember a human body, too. This is less impressive than the slow cinema aspect - every slasher movie worth its salt has tried to deliver a kill that nobody has seen before - but even so, In a Violent Nature’s kills make all the build-up worth it. There’s one involving a chain and some, uh, contorting that everybody’s talking about; another kill involving a piece of lumberjack machinery and a paralyzed victim is perhaps even better and fits with the pace of the film.
In a Violent Nature might not be destined to become a classic of the genre, as the very things that make it interesting also prevent it from indulging in some of the familiar fun of a slasher movie. It has flaws, but they are in the service of doing something new. You have never seen a slasher movie like this before, and that’s high praise when we’ve seen a slasher movie do just about everything else.
In a Violent Nature is out now in US theaters and will arrive on streaming service Shudder internationally later in the year.
For more, check out our list of the best horror movies or keep up to date with the upcoming horror movies heading our way.
