In A Violent Nature (2024)

"Revisionist Slasher Turns Out To Be Better Than An Awful Lot of Them"

Have you ever watched a slasher film and wondered what the killer was up to during those lengthy and frequently dull sequences where the victims-to-be were doing all the things deemed appropriate for gory punishment by the culture of 1980s Reaganite America? Well wonder no more as writer-director Chris Nash's film takes exactly that angle. 

Offscreen mumbling characters remove a locket from a grave, causing the resurrection of Jason Voorhees clone 'Johnny', his retrieval of said item becoming the raison d'etre for the next ninety minutes of carnage. We follow him as he makes his way through some beautifully shot rustic scenes, as he spies on some annoying teenagers who mumble their way through his back story, and then as he despatches them with the tools he finds in a museum exhibit.

A contemporary review of Steve Miner's FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 (1981) described it as 'short sharp shocks punctuate slabs of tedium', which is actually a pretty fair summation of most of that series. It's therefore a bit of a mystery why nobody has every thought of the most obvious way to make those slabs of tedium more interesting by telling most of the story from the point of the view of the killer. Which is just what IN A VIOLENT NATURE does. 

It also allows Nash to provide a little more nuance than these films usually offer. A scene where our hulking maniac plays with a toy car while teenagers squabble just out of view provides an almost 'Karloff as the monster' moment of sympathy that nearly all movies in this genre never even think to include.

On the downside, the lengthy shots where we follow Johnny are a little reminiscent of RPG computer games where you're aching to get to the first quest, and there's an attempt at an explanation for why slashers like Johnny behave the way they do that falls a bit flat but these are actually minor quibbles. IN A VIOLENT NATURE is head and shoulders above recent 'slasher tribute' movies like Eli Roth's THANKSGIVING or FOUNDER'S DAY in that it treats its subject matter both seriously and sympathetically. Here's a clip:

Chris Nash's IN A VIOLENT NATURE is on general UK cinema release from Altitude Films now and is out on Digital from 12th August 2024