Sundance Review: IN A VIOLENT NATURE Delivers a New and Unique View of Slashers

Everyone knows the plot of the classic slasher movie. Even if they’re not exactly your favorite genre, slasher films have become a major cinematic trope. The hot young people alone in the woods, the long-ago wronged killer out for revenge, you know the drill. In a Violent Nature, directed by Chris Nash, is a movie that hits every note of the classic slasher film, but tries to put its own spin on it.

A gruesome killer is awakened after his not-so-final resting place is disturbed, thus cursing the land on which he roams and anyone who crosses his path. These hapless victims of course include your classic tough guy with a gun, as well as a group of stupid teenagers on a weekend camping trip. But instead of following the victims from beginning to end, we follow the slasher himself on his quest for blood.

Literally, a comically large portion of this film is the camera following our slasher as he trudges through the woods. This made the pacing kind of inconsistent, with a lot of momentum lost in between kills.

And speaking of, there are some of the most grotesque and over-the-top kills I’ve ever seen in this movie! Really gory stuff that I won’t describe because I really don’t want to spoil them for anyone. The moments where the slasher is doing his classic slashing were the parts that I thought worked best.

I appreciated that this film tries to do something different with the ambiance and the pace, even if it doesn’t entirely work for me.

Here’s the description of the film:

The enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness.

In his directorial feature debut, Chris Nash skillfully flips the slasher genre on its head by shifting the perspective from the victims to the killer with haunting effect. In A Violent Nature upends a formulaic mainstay featured within horror films for decades, minimizing familiar tropes to inject new life into the genre. Instead of dwelling alongside promiscuous young people in a remote forest cabin before they get what’s coming to them, the film keeps their unsuspecting voices in the distance as we follow a maniacal murderer trudging through the woods to stalk his prey. Infusing inventive kills with generous amounts of gore, Nash is methodical in his approach, setting an ominous and ambient tone that will linger within your psyche for a long time to come.