Nature Doesn’t Live Up to the Hype

1 star

Slasher movies can be many things. They can be gorey or goofy, terrifying or tame. They can be well-directed works of originality that spawn franchises that last generations or they can be low-budget video nasties that make you wonder how they ever got made in the first place.

The one thing a slasher movie should never be is boring. In a Violent Nature is boring.

Written and directed by Chris Nash, In a Violent Nature tells the story of a cursed locket hung in a ramshackle cabin deep in the woods. Legend has it that if the locket is ever taken, an avenging demon will arise to get it back, butchering all those who stole it and anyone who stands in the way of it being returned. So it’s no big surprise to the audience that when a bunch of camping teens steal it, the curse, in the form of a silent giant named Johnny, turns out to be real.

Cursed objects and stupid kids are staples of slasher movies, as are big, silent, invincible slaughter machines. Director Sean Cunningham created the blueprint for this kind of film when he had Jason Voorhees start killing counselors at Camp Crystal Lake 44 years ago. Since then, there have been dozens of good and bad imitators, but very few have surpassed what Cunningham created.

In his director’s statement (click here to read it), Nash talks about being indebted to films like Friday the 13th for inspiring his movie. But the truth is, In a Violent Nature plays like a carbon copy of Cunningham’s film, with just enough changes to make it an ‘homage” instead of a total ripoff. And the most significant change he makes is to play it slow. Really, slow. Nash may call it “deliberate and meditative cinema,” but it’s deadly dull. The whole idea of a slasher film is to build a sense of tension between kills to raise the level of anxiety in the audience as they wait for the killer to strike again. It’s hard to feel anything but bored following Johnny as he plods ponderously through the woods. Nash also has the annoying habit of having characters talk offscreen like they are part of the soundtrack instead of part of the story. It’s an artistic decision that comes off as distracting and pretentious.

Of course, none of this would matter if the reason fans go to see slasher movies, the actual slashing, were cool and exciting. They’re not. A lot of the pre-release press surrounding In a Violent Nature proclaimed that it showed the audience the killer’s point of view, like you were watching the people die through the eyes of Johnny (or his mask), giving it a more visceral feel. It never happens. There was also a lot of publicity talking about people becoming ill and throwing up at early screenings of Nash’s film. There is one brutal slaying in the film that might have the less experienced horror movie fans squirming in their seats, but it’s too ridiculous to earn that strong a reaction. Granted, preposterous killings are a staple of slasher movies, but fans will let such things slide when they’re done with cool slasher style. The big kill in In a Violent Nature doesn’t work because nothing about the film has built up to such an implausibly horrific scene. Like so much of Nash’s film, it simply hasn’t been earned.