Sean Parker
After ten films, a crossover, a reboot, and an upcoming television series, you’d think every avenue in the Friday the 13th franchise had been thoroughly exhausted. Honestly, finding any originality in the slasher genre is difficult. However, on rare occasions, the horror gods favor us with something special. Last weekend, The Boston Underground Film Festival held the East Coast premiere of Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature, and it was an absolute pleasure to behold, as the film is seen from the point of view of the killer instead of the usual teenagers he’s stalking.
If you’ve ever wondered what Jason Voorhies was doing in the background while the teenagers searched for their missing friends, then In A Violent Nature will show you. The film starts with Johnny (Cult Hero’s Ry Barrett) rising from the dead when a passing group of hikers steals a locket from the burned remnants of an old fire tower. After that, we’re firmly planted over the shoulder of the brawny menace as he goes on a killing spree to recover what was taken from him. Plot points from the perspective of Johnny’s potential victims are made known whenever he’s within earshot of someone, but they typically play like cutscenes interrupting the gameplay of a third-person open-world video game.
While In A Violent Nature is brutally violent and gory and contains some of the best slasher kills in years (the extreme yoga kill is a body horror nightmare by itself), it’s also a subversive and meditative experience that contrasts the highly volatile on-screen killer against this colorful, sun-soaked portrait of serene woodlands. The tranquil sounds of chirping birds, rustling leaves, and summer breezes are transposed against the imposed violent agenda of the killer.
After the showing at the Brattle, I asked director Chris Nash about the early POV of the character, sharing my comparison to third-person video games and asking if he drew any inspiration from there. He told me no but understood the parallel. He revealed that Gus van Sant’s 2003 thriller Elephant inspired much of the way the film was shot. I immediately understood. While I haven’t seen Elephant since renting it through Netflix, way before streaming back when Netflix shipped DVDs by mail, I remember the film vividly. Elephant caught a lot of flack for showing up when it did, four years after Columbine, with many reviewers crying, “bad taste” and “too soon.” Yet, the film stays with you as the viewer experiences the horrifying events of a school shooting through the eyes of students.
Nash and I also briefly discussed the 4:3 aspect ratio In A Violent Nature is presented in. I’m not always a big fan of the oft-used aesthetic, mainly because I don’t always feel the immersion the director is going for. Chris Nash said he liked the idea because that was how he remembers seeing the Friday the 13th movies. Nash probably watched those films on videocassettes or cable on an old cathode ray tube TV like most of us, and it seems he wants us to relive that rental store era of horror nostalgia. This is one of the rare cases where I agree with the ratio. The narrower focus on Johnny gives the film a tighter feel, forcing you to focus on the killer in the frame instead of the beautiful landscape.
While it may not be fair to say, “If you’ve seen one slasher movie, you’ve seen them all,” In A Violent Nature manipulates the concept. If you’ve seen a Friday the 13th movie, you already have a leg up on the two-dimensional character setups, plot structure, and kill count extravagance. If you’ve seen Scream, you know the rules for surviving this kind of horror movie. And if you’ve seen I Know What You Did Last Summer, well, you’re in for a couple of hilarious jokes. Knowing the medium isn’t essential to enjoying In A Violent Nature, but it is made with slasher fandom in mind.
Regardless, Nash builds In A Violent Nature to be his own. It subversively sidesteps the trappings of the genre to construct a slasher that’s somewhat understood despite the trail of blood left in his wake. The film’s final act is taut and unnerving, referencing the final scenes from the Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the original Friday the 13th, which have cautioned audiences for the last forty to fifty years never to let their guard down. The result is slightly traumatizing to that audience and magnificently effective.
Debuting at Sundance back in January, Shudder swallowed up the North American distribution rights before an audience even viewed In A Violent Nature. Boy, is their audience about to be in for something unique. The film screened last week as part of the Boston Underground Film Festival and will be released in theaters on May 31 before releasing to the streamer in the second half of the year.
