Chris Nash – film review of “In a Violent Nature”

Narratively, there’s little in Nash’s film that we haven’t seen before. A group of drunken teenagers living in a cabin steal a necklace from a grave and awaken the occupant from his restful sleep to ravage them one by one. From the mud and leaves rises the hulking menace of a being covered in cuts and dirt, stalking through the woods in search of his mother’s pendant.

Finally, the creature arms itself with a pair of lumberjack hooks, puts on a fireman’s mask and begins to hunt its prey. So far, so normal for the horror genre, but where In a violent nature differs from previous entries in the slasher horror subgenre in the way it is shot. Nash frequently uses a third-person shot from behind to show the creature taking each step through increasingly beautiful natural landscapes, achieving a sort of video game aesthetic.

This choice certainly pays off aesthetically, but it also has narrative and thematic significance. In a violent nature has no morals; we don’t necessarily root for the group of teenagers, nor do we like them – in fact, they probably border on the cliched, which is annoying. In that light, we long to see the creature destroy them in the most brutal way possible, furthering the sick and intoxicating voyeurism that the horror genre usually offers.

Viewed in this light, the film is extremely satisfying, and Nash describes some truly brilliant and inventive murders, always bloody, gruesome and unique. One of these murders could well be one of the greatest in the history of horror: shocking, hilarious and forever unforgettable. Excessive violence has a meaning here, however, and we learn that the creature is actually somewhat infantile in its mental capacity.

Another particularly gruesome murder involves a decapitated corpse being beaten for a humorously long period of time until it becomes clear that violence is simply a form of play and curiosity, perhaps as the film’s title suggests. Nash uses all the accepted conventions of slasher horror and adds a quasi-supernatural curse that causes the dead to rise again, but its archetypal properties do not detract from his unique approach to style and production choices.

On occasion, In a violent nature threatens to drag on. Still, these moments either remind us of our own thirst for blood when watching a horror film, or they actually add to the tension, especially given the film’s finale, which brilliantly plays on the tranquil atmosphere of its setting and the violent expectations of the genre itself.

Nash’s film is bold and, while it follows the typical conventions of its subgenre, it takes bold risks in telling a story that has been told a million times before. With some of the best and bloodiest horror kills in a long time and an aesthetic that can occasionally convey a sense of natural calm, In a violent nature is a fascinating interpretation of the modern slasher.

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