One of Shudder’s most recent releases, In a Violent Nature, stirred resounding buzz surrounding its lead-up and release, promising a post-modern approach to classic 80’s slashers by placing the audience behind the mask. The film was written and directed by Chris Nash, who previously wrote the segment “Z is for Zygote” for The ABCs of Death 2 and portrayed Transformed Sarah in the 2016 cosmic body-horror film The Void. The meta approach doesn’t stop there, however. Throughout the film, it’s revealed that we’re being presented with the events of a later franchise sequel, with returning characters and references to similar past occurrences. The film succeeds in manufacturing a mythology dense with genre tropes like the tragic death of a child who inexplicably becomes the beast who stalks the forest, the killer’s archenemy—in the vein of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter’s Tommy Jarvis—and the final girl.
While In a Violent Nature succeeds in crafting a well-executed concept chock-full of impressive practical effects and beautifully shot visuals, the film remains undeniably uninspired. Ry Barrett portrays the reanimated behemoth Johnny, an emotionless killing machine, hellbent on wreaking havoc on those who dare exist in the area surrounding his desecrated grounds. The film’s attempts to remedy this through fleeting glimpses of Johnny’s backstory—a brief flashback of his father speaking to him, his pondering a toy car keyring, and the recurring motif of his mother’s golden necklace—ultimately fail to do more than key the audience into the film’s mythology. Johnny is an empathetic character only because we are told so.
It seems unfair to compare films, as I believe that a story should be met on its own terms, but the terms of this film are entirely based on the ones that came before it—specifically the Friday the 13th franchise. This is the nature of meta-narratives and post-modernism. Being a fan of the post-modern approach to storytelling, when I first heard about In a Violent Nature, I believed the film had been handcrafted for horror fans like myself. We’ve seen this approach succeed with films like Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, The Cabin in the Woods, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, and the wraparound segment of this year’s V/H/S/Beyond. Scream built an entire franchise on the concept. This is to say, it can and has been done with great success.
In a Violent Nature is ultimately a mediocre film, neither lovable nor hatable. Its attempts at subversion quickly become derivative and reliant on homage. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, and Friday the 13th found success in the genre by taking the core model of “Killer Chases Teens With Sharp Object” and placing it in unique settings with original storylines. In a Violent Nature does not. Instead, we see an FX team’s demo reel, elongated into a 94-minute art film that tells us nothing more about the genre than we already knew.
Despite all of this, a sequel has been set by Shudder and IFC films, with Nash returning to write.
