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Film: In a Violent Nature
Year: 2024
Director: Chris Nash
Writer: Chris Nash
Starring: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic and Cameron Love
Review:
This was a movie that I knew was coming out. I don’t watch trailers or follow release dates outside of checking what is playing at my local theaters. I’ll be honest, the trailer’s sound design caught my attention. The glimpses I saw had me intrigued. I will preface, I’m not always the biggest slasher fan. The title held promise as well. I did give this a rewatch now that it is on Shudder to see how I sat with it.
Synopsis: when a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny (Ry Barrett), a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year-old crime. He is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it.
We start this with the event of the locket being taken from the synopsis. We don’t see the people, just hear them talking. We then see this pole in the ground move. That is when something appears from the ground. We don’t get a good look, just following as they walk. We learn later from a story told by campfire that this hulking entity is Johnny.
This follows him until he comes to a dead animal. It looks like a dog or a coyote that got stuck in a trap. It has since died. Johnny hears arguing so he goes in that direction. This leads to the house belonging to a man named Chuck (Timothy Paul McCarthy). The owner is arguing with a ranger, played by Reece Presley. It is about going into the woods and laying these traps. The owner claims he’s not. Johnny walks into the house and with good camera work, he misses being seen by Chuck. That is until Johnny reaches for a medallion that he thinks is his. Chuck shoots him and this draws an attack by the hulking figure. The item isn’t what he’s looking for though.
Johnny continues to search and this leads him to the campfire. This is where we learn about the lore of this character. What I like here is that this feels like a throwback to things like Friday the 13th Part 2 or The Burning. Johnny listens to them and thinks that he sees one of the people putting something in his pocket. In this group are Kris (Andrea Pavlovic), Colt (Cameron Love), Troy (Liam Leone), Ehren (Sam Roulston), Aurora (Charlotte Creaghan), Evan (Alexander Oliver) and Brodie (Lea Rose Sebastianis).
They decide to head in and one of them, Ehren, goes off into the woods. He’s stalked by Johnny and then killed. He drags the corpse to a ranger station, where inside is paying homage to firefighters that worked in this area. The lore said that Johnny wore one of their masks with his original massacre and takes one now. He also takes hooks on a chain and an ax. He heads back to where this group is to exact more of his revenge.
That is where I’ll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start is that this is a throwback to slashers in their heyday. There is an argument to be made that it isn’t, which I can see. What I’ll say though, the killings are brutal when we see them, there is stalking of victims and it is a slow burn.
Now that I’ve set that up, let’s delve deeper into this. As someone who focuses on story, this is lacking in that department. I can also roll with the idea that we had Johnny, who was mentally handicapped. This area had loggers and one of them was injured because of a toy that Johnny left out. Should say that his father owned a store. This is during a time when they would raise prices and indebt the workers to them. That already makes the workers not like him. They did something they shouldn’t with hurting the son due to that logger to not being able to work. The lore is that he didn’t stay dead though and came back for revenge. This seems to happen periodically. I’m there for that. It feels like Jason Voorhees, Victor Crowley or even Cropsey. There is enough folklore, whether it is true is another thing, but that’s the great thing about local legends. Hearing that was enough for me to enjoy.
Since this is considered a slasher film, I tend to rate this on whether we get good characters or good killings. I’ll go to filmmaking here and say that when we see the kills, they deliver. They are done practical, which I love. The most brutal is Aurora. It went places I wasn’t expecting. There are others that I think go too far with what Johnny is doing, but I also appreciate that this is in line with the character. I also think that the cinematography, framing and sound design help here. There is more that I need to delve into for this last grouping but what they do for the kills is on point.
I will then finish that thought. There is focus on walking here. It is slow and we follow Johnny for the majority. I do think that we needed to trim that down a bit since it feels like filler. It makes sense what they’re doing. It is building dread to see who is next to meet their fate. There’s also another sequence later where we don’t know if a character will get away. I thought that this looked good. The framing is interesting, whether we are seeing from 3rd person or showing surroundings change to show progress of time. I’d also say the use of sound was good to help signify that characters are close. It also captures the isolation and where this is set. This is well-made, even though it slows this down.
Then getting back to the other thing that I gauge, which is characters. I do think this falls short. We know that Kris is seeing Troy. Pavlovic is attractive so that helps. The problem is that the characters are bland to me. We don’t learn enough. Colt has dealt with tragedy with a parent passing away. Love, Leone, Sebastianis, Roulston, Creaghan and Oliver are fine. I do like Presley as the ranger, McCarthy as Chuck works and the monologue that Lauren-Marie Taylor gives is great. My buddy Derek pointed out the significance here, which increased my enjoyment of this. They were more distinguished due to specific scenes or sequences. I’ll also end here by saying that Barrett’s size was perfect for the villain.
That should be all that I have so in conclusion, even though I’m not a slasher fan per say, I dug what this did. It is a throwback to these films. We get enough folklore about Johnny to know why he is on a rampage. He then picks off characters in brutal ways. When we see the killings, I love that they’re violent and gory. This is well-made. The cinematography, effects and sound design are great there. An issue I have is with the pacing and just following Johnny walk as much as we do. That doesn’t ruin this by any stretch. I enjoyed my time here and my revisit, my rating stayed the same. I do recommend it to see how it works for you.
My Rating: 7 out of 10