In A Violent Nature is a Friday the 13th movie from Jason’s point of view. I saw a post on X saying it was the most important horror movie of 2024, so why not check it out?
That random X poster lied to me, but In A Violent Nature has value as a curiosity. Let’s check it out. Spoilers will happen.
In A Violent Nature
Chris Nash wrote and directed In A Violent Nature. Previously, he did the Z Is For Zygote short on ABCs of Death 2 and worked on the special effects of Psycho Gorman.
As for the writing part of the equation, Nash did not have to work too hard on In A Violent Nature. Friday the 13th movies are already thin on plot. Guess what? They get even thinner if one tells them from Jason’s point of view.
All Jason does is move from kill to kill. He has no dialogue. He has no motivation beyond walking and killing unless one wants to say he avenges the death of his mother or protects Camp Crystal Lake from a potential outbreak of STDs.
On the other hand, Nash’s direction is somewhat interesting. He drew inspiration from Gust Van Sant films and emphasized static long takes. He shot the film in academy ratio (1:37:1) because that is how he watched slasher films on VHS as a kid. Finally, In A Violent Nature has no musical score. It ends up being weirdly, quietly contemplative for a slasher film.
As for the cast, In A Violent Nature stars a group of mostly unknown actors and actresses playing the standard camper types. Some slasher fans may recognize Lauren-Marie Taylor, who played Vickie in Friday the 13th Part 2.
Such slasher film characters are usually dinged for being nothing more than cannon fodder. This is even more egregious in In A Violent Nature. Since the story is told from the killer’s point of view, we don’t even get scenes where a character shows themselves to be a spastic dancer or a dopey prankster in a hockey mask. They are merely meat sacks.
In A Violent Forces Of Nature
Much of In A Violent Nature is simply the killer, referred to as Johnny, walking through the woods with the camera focused on his back. These shots are somewhat spooky, as they show the robotic, relentless nature of the slasher. It also reveals how the slasher always gets where he needs to go: he simply doesn’t stop his walking pursuit, ever.
The best aspect of the film is that we get glimpses of what happens in a standard Friday the 13th film happening around its edges. The legend of Johnny is told around a campfire while he lurks in the woods. We also learn that In A Violent Nature is actually a sequel film, in that a character appears who put Johnny to rest previously.
If the viewer is into kills, In A Violent Nature offers some gore. Although, the style Nash uses — long, static shots — tends to push the kills too far into cruelty rather than cartoonish. The best kill actually has zero gore. A character swims, and Johnny submerges in the water to stalk the victim. The camera holds and holds, and the viewer is never sure when or what exactly is going to happen until it happens, and the result is nicely restrained.
In A Violent Mother Nature
Yet, ultimately, it is these long, static shots that prove to be In A Violent Nature’s downfall. The movie ends up being tedious to watch as its runtime builds up. This is especially evident during another kill. The entire sequence is approximately seven minutes long in a 90-minute movie. That is literally seven percent of the film.
The scene involves a character with a broken neck and a log splitter. It’s not as graphic as it could be, but it drains all of the air out of the movie. This kind of “artistry” doesn’t work for a slasher movie. An Italian could maybe pull it off, but Nash is not the guy. The scene is indulgent and the antithesis of what slasher films are about.
Slasher films are a three-S formula: suspense, stalk and shock. In A Violent Nature ends up being slow, sadistic and a slog as Johnny plods from one kill to the next in his quest for his mother’s locket.
Eventually, the film slows to a complete stop as it leaves Johnny’s point of view and ends with a long, talky truck drive where Lauren-Marie Taylor tells a story about her brother’s encounter with a rogue bear. This last about 13 minutes. A metaphor exists there, but it is a false metaphor. The viewer can tell it is there to make something thin sound intelligent.
It’s the old lipstick-on-a-pig trick. It’s similar to what Sinners did.
No, we didn’t make a kind of boring vampire movie. It’s actually about racism because we are SMORT!
Regardless, more than 20 percent of In A Violent Nature is spent on a single kill and a rambling conversation in a truck.
In A Violent Nature Of The Beast
In A Violent Nature has value as a curiosity. If you ever wanted to watch a Friday the 13th movie from Jason’s point of view, this is your chance. But there is not much there at the end of the day. In A Violent Nature is not so much a movie as a novelty. It’s most interesting aspect is its style. Yet, a regular Friday the 13th film is preferable because it has the sense to know it is nonsense. In A Violent Nature takes itself too seriously. Nash deserves applause for trying to elevate the genre. Yet, what he reveals from that height is that these kind of films are probably destined to remain lowest common denominator entertainment.
