By Seth Lukas Hynes
In A Violent Nature
Starring Ry Barrett
R18+
4/5
In A Violent Nature is a savage Canadian horror movie with an intriguing minimalist style that may turn off some viewers.
When a group of campers steal a necklace from a fire tower in the woods, a killer rises from the dead to hunt them down.
Shot on film (an increasing rarity these days) and full of visceral practical effects, In A Violent Nature is a lean slasher throwback: the first act establishes the killer, his lore and a cast of jerks for him to kill, and the rest of the film shows him doing just that.
In A Violent Nature features some extremely creative brutality, but writer-director Chris Nash brings a documentary-like detachment through the long static shots (mostly from the killer’s perspective) and lack of non-diegetic (played outside the film’s world) music.
A scene with a log-splitter is one of the most gut-wrenchingly tense scenes of the year, and the simple presentation sends our minds into horrified overdrive like good horror should.
Despite being a supernatural slasher pastiche, In A Violent Nature is highly-reminiscent of Gus Van Sant’s 2002 film Gerry, which is a slow, trance-like drama about two friends stuck in the desert.
Like Gerry, marching footsteps are a near-constant layer of the soundscape, with large tracts of the film showing the killer slowly walking from place to place and kill to kill.
Some viewers will be bored to tears by this approach, and these shots do end up somewhat monotonous, but still heighten our grim anticipation throughout the killer’s rampage.
Slow, languid, horrifically gruesome but minimalist to a fault, In A Violent Nature is available on Shudder and to rent or buy on iTunes.
