A Sick, Unsettling, Singular Slasher Flick

Imagine the Dardenne brothers got very high one night on some primo hash, then directed a slasher flick.

That may be the best way to describe In a Violent Nature, and yes, we admit that this review has already drawn battle lines: You can sense jump-scare purists scoffing, arthouse habitues recoiling, and anyone who falls within the center of that Venn diagram [raises hand] salivating. That middle ground is indeed the sweet spot of writer-director Chris Nash’s feature debut, which adopts a calming, oddly meditative aesthetic before making extremely good on the promise of its title. In a perfect world, this sick, unsettling addition to the cabin-in-the-woods film canon would unite both camps, each of whom would view its exotic elements as gateway drugs. Suddenly, gorehounds would be digging Rosetta en masse, and moviegoers unfamiliar with vintage grindhouse fodder would be dying to see more heads pulled pretzel-like through punctured abdomens. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

It starts, as so many great, grisly excursions into the underbelly of cinema do, with dumbass youngsters and a curse. Traipsing around in a forest, two guys come across a graveyard. One of them pockets a locket he finds hanging on a stick. Seconds after they walk off, someone, or perhaps some thing, rises from beneath the earth. Courtesy of a clever riff on the ol’ campfire ghost-story chestnut — and an extremely clunky bit of magic-mirror flashback exposition — we eventually find out that this freshly awakened corpse is named Johnny (Ry Barrett). Once upon a time, he was a “slow kid” who became the victim of a prank gone very wrong. Cut to a week later, and those bullies and most of a nearby lumberjack camp have been mysteriously slaughtered. As for the locket, it belonged to Johnny’s mother, and was the only thing that kept his soul at rest. Remove that jewelry and, well …you can guess what comes next.

So our hulking, shambling, rotting-in-real-time Johnny goes walking through the woods, encountering a number of locals and campers and numerous twentysomething douchebags as he searches for the family heirloom. They all meet an extremely violent end, naturally, but not before the movie allows us to trail behind the killer as he calmly hikes toward his next victims, keeping a respective distance as he trudges from one soon-to-be crime scene to the next. (See: the aforementioned Dardenne reference.) You spend much of the movie riding shotgun with a homicidal maniac, with the occasional actual shotgun coming into play. A bold move on Nash’s part, though not without precedent. Some have contended that it’s the first slasher film to fully adopt a slasher’s point-of-view, as if the movie had taken the original Halloween‘s unforgettable opening and extended it to feature-length. This is less first-person shooter than third-person RPG perspective, however, and is all the more powerful for it. The concept combines Johnny’s frame of reference without giving you his frame of mind — observe the carnage, feel no compassion — with the helplessness of a hostage situation. You’re largely along for his ride, whether you care to be or not.

Combine that unique touch with a soundtrack that forgoes a score for the gentle crunch of boots on a forest floor, chirping birds and the occasional shriek of terror, and In a Violent Nature starts to feel like a lovely afternoon stroll punctuated by the occasional decapitation. What’s quietly revolutionary about all of this, however, is the dynamic that happens when the movie remembers that, between lulling walkabouts, it’s still a nasty piece of work already in progress. Nash can be subtle and elliptical, as when a Jaws-like, death-from-below kill is viewed in long shot. Or, courtesy of a brilliant form cut, Johnny’s hand goes from reaching for someone’s face to reaching for an item in a house — only now that giant mitt of his is bloodied. But he can also be as gruesome as he wants to be, sometimes in the most baroque fashion imaginable. It’s time to talk about the “yoga kill.”

Already infamous, uniquely conceived, capable of causing guffaws and barfing in equal measure, In a Violent Nature‘s extraordinary, pièce de résistance isn’t the first onscreen death we witness in all of its gory glory. (A shout-out to the gentleman who loses half his cranium, which is then used to bust into a museum so Johnny can procure old-school firefighter’s mask and weaponry. Waste not, want not!) It’s the one you’ll remember, though. A young woman (Charlotte Creaghan) is doing yoga on a cliffside perch, taking in the picturesque scenery. Johnny approaches. She screams. Turning to run, she realizes she has nowhere to go but down a 100-foot drop. Johnny punches his hand through her stomach, plunges a chained hook into her head… and pulls until she’s formed the equivalent of an uppercase letter P. Horror nerds, you may begin your Rudy-clapping. Apologies to everyone else if you just got sick on your phone or laptop.

There’s nothing “elevated” about that moment, and the fact that In a Violent Nature sets up a storytelling style that utilizes highbrow aesthetics while still keeping one foot firmly planted in the genre gutter is what makes this feel like a once-in-generation slasher flick. Some may grouse that it concludes not with a big bang but a quiet whimper, yet even that’s a purposeful feint and parry away from what we’ve been led to expect from the usual final-girl conclusions. There’s closure, certainly, but also a palpable sense of unending dread — as if the walking dead never really, truly come to a standstill. As for the creators of this grotty, surprisingly graceful horror movie, let’s hope they don’t stop doing what they do, either.