By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic and Cameron Love
Written and directed by Chris Nash
Shudder
IN A VIOLENT NATURE proceeds from a simple but game-changing idea: What if a slasher film, instead of presenting the opening or occasional scene from the killer’s point of view, spent the entire running time attached to him? It’s a coincidence that NATURE is premiering at the current Sundance Film Festival just a few days after Steven Soderbergh’s PRESENCE, which is wholly seen through the eyes of a ghost haunting a family, and NATURE doesn’t do the same thing, exactly. Instead of taking the villain’s perspective, writer/director Chris Nash follows him at a close distance as he goes about his murderous activities; the result isn’t quite a reinvention of the form, but it creates a different and very effective kind of tension.
Nash establishes from the opening scene that he’ll be taking a more composed, objective visual stance than typically seen in the horror genre–kind of like SKINAMARINK, albeit a lot less abstract. Over images of a collapsed fire tower deep in the woods, we hear some hikers exploring it, but do not see them until one reaches into frame to take a necklace hanging on part of the wreckage. The theft triggers the emergence of a hulking figure whose name, we will soon learn, is Johnny (Ry Barrett). For quite some time, as the camera tracks behind him, we don’t see Johnny’s face, just the back of his bald, battered head as he makes his way through the trees–and from the start, you get the sense you don’t want him turning around and seeing you. Finding his way to an isolated house, Johnny claims its occupant as his first victim, as we get hints that he has a history with both.
When he subsequently spots a passing car full of whooping-it-up guys and girls, it’s clear that we’re heading straight into FRIDAY THE 13TH/THE BURNING/MADMAN etc. mode. Only this time, Johnny is our central figure, his footsteps crunching heavily on fallen leaves and other underbrush yet never seeming to alert his hapless victims. Nash wrings considerable suspense out of foregrounding his villain, as we watch him get closer and closer to his unsuspecting targets, and there’s a particularly well-sustained setpiece at a lake in which the filmmaker keeps us uneasy while showing very little. That kind of restraint is the exception, though, as the kills become very graphic very quickly, and the physical specifics of another early murder are outrageous enough to have you gasping and laughing at the same time. The meaty, showy, splattery makeup and prosthetics were overseen by Steven Kostanski, whom Nash, among other past effects credits, worked alongside on PSYCHO GOREMAN.
Nash and cinematographer Pierce Derks have shot IN A VIOLENT NATURE in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio recalling the VHS format on which Nash viewed teen-kill classics in his youth, though the images are very polished and capture a great sense of middle-of-nowhere isolation. The nighttime darkness is oppressive without ever losing clarity, and during the day, the Ontario locations look like very pleasant places to hang out were it not for the bloodthirsty psychopath marauding through them. (In fact, the aforementioned outrageous kill takes place at the most striking location, an effective juxtaposition of setting and incident.) Throughout, Tim Atkins and Michelle Hwu’s superb sound design immerses you in the environment, and as IN A VIOLENT NATURE goes on, Nash and Derks find different perspectives from which to shoot the action so that the style avoids sameness. There some subtly evocative choices as well; after one especially grisly slaying, the camera hangs a little further behind Johnny than it has before, as if afraid of getting too close to him. Midway through the film, Johnny changes his look as well, stealing and donning a vintage firefighting outfit that makes him resemble a giant insect.
IN A VIOLENT NATURE is largely a stylistic exercise, and a potent one, that doesn’t attempt to update its traditional material. The youths, when we’re near enough to see and hear them clearly, make the usual dumb decisions and have the usual pointless arguments in the face of danger, and the authorities prove typically hapless. (The fate of one of them is protracted and sadistic enough to briefly foul the mood.) There’s also a campfire discussion of the “White Pines Slaughter” and other moments of exposition that provide Johnny a backstory. That around-the-fire scene is one of a few times the vantage point becomes untethered from the villain for the sake of the storytelling, and the final act (featuring a cameo that classic slasher fans will appreciate) also employs a significant shift in emphasis. Yet it works because, by this point, Johnny has been established as such a powerful physical presence that his threat even permeates the scenes he isn’t in.
