In A Violent Nature (2024) review: Shudder Slasher really hooks you in…

Prepare yourselves everyone for what may well be one of 2024’s most marmite of movies, because In A Violent Nature is a Canadian slasher dead set to be both loved and loathed by many. A methodical horror experience that takes its core concept and runs, or rather walks menacingly, with it, as it offers up a vice grip like exercise in tension, bloodshed and – yes – violent nature, and a slasher offering that just might be one of the most significant and bold years.

Like one of the lumbering, mask-wearing, almost (and sometimes very much) supernatural killers at the core of them, slasher films are destined to keep on rising from the grave again, and again, on the screen. And we are very grateful for it. Decades on from its oft debated origins (was Halloween the start? Was it Psycho? Or was it Thirteen Women?), it is still a genre in horror that has a brutal thrill, an unequivocal effectiveness and, as we shall see once again, an ability to adapt and change shape, while still very much feeling gratifying and true. 

Be it Jason Voorhees stalking the woods, entering space or fighting a girl with telekinesis, he is always Jason and no matter what variables change, or how great or ill conceived that change may be, we love him for it and will go back for another round tour of “Camp Blood” again. And in writer/director Chris Nash’s Canadian slasher, our thirst for this visceral gratification is both tested, boldly manipulated and used to create a modern day slasher that is indebted to and adoring of the silhouette of Jason and his summer camp stalking ilk, while also daringly thematic and a very distinctive experiment in changing one simple formula and admirably committing to it.

The story sees a group of friends discover a locket at the remains of a fire tower deep in the woods, as one of them takes it, the ground begins to move and thus awakens a monstrous undead figure, who seems driven by an otherworldly urge to kill and get back that locket. This film quite literally changes our point of view and – by and large – remains almost entirely alongside our silent killer for the entire duration, a killer we later find to be called Johnny (Ry Barrett). 

Like a territorial wild animal, once awoken, Johnny stalks the woods and hunts down the summer camp dwelling young ‘uns. Through the dialogue overheard, as well as select glimpses into Johnny’s headspace, we learn of his lore, his tragic campfire horror backstory and his very reason for not being at rest, and perhaps never being able to. In A Violent Nature is a grisly slasher that embraces all the tropes, but by reversing the view, is immediately refreshing and bravely devoted to its slow builds between the eruptions of splatter and death. And boy when they come, they are explosive, with the practical effects gore being truly memorable and twisted. In fact one ‘hooking’ nasty scene (you’ll know the one when you see it) apparently re-introduced some people’s lunch to them on the film’s festival screenings!

This blood spewing horror, next to the slow cinema and documentary inspired aura that Nash evokes, the fireman smoke protector helmet wearing figure he creates and the subversive swings he takes, all combine to create a once-in-a-generation type of experience that will catch so many off-guard. This is no more evident than in a bound to be divisive finish that has you ready, prone and in unbearable waiting for a conclusion that not so much never comes, as one that arrives in the most unexpected of impactful ways. And with a cameo for slasher aficionados to relish too. It will piss some people off certainly, just as much as it will resonate and linger with so many others. However it is a finish that typifies just what In A Violent Nature is and what it is getting at.

Nash’s film is one brought up on a strict diet and unashamed love for what slasher film’s at their bone marrow have, can and continue to accomplish. It is a gory joy, a picturesque (Pierce Derks’ cinematography is sublime) atmospheric experience and a deliberately paced picture that is a gift to those who always welcomed seeing more of what kept these slasher icons coming back. Just as it is a contemplative look at the very idea of a soul never at rest, origins of evil and violence’s undying cycle, both from an onscreen perspective and from the perspective on the onlooking viewer and their sadistic expectations. 

It is a movie that shows us all the dismembering mayhem we could ask for, building a dread from its drip fed backstory, before reaching a crescendo that psychologically expresses just what it is a ‘final girl’ is doomed to live with. Surviving is only the first part. There’s a reason the Laurie Strode’s and the Sally Hardesty’s often never stopped looking for their bogeyman in these films, because that’s what happens, they never leave you, and always lie out their among the enveloping wilderness ready to rise again, ready to kill again. 

In A Violent Nature is a distinctive and quietly chilling slasher, that is as gruesome as it is thoughtful. Deconstructing all that we love about these films, and putting us on the opposite side, behind the mask, before stranding us back again, in a now alternate reality where we are now doomed to keep staring at those trees and waiting for the “monster” to show up again. 

As they themselves are also destined to rise over and over, with no peace, the semblances of what they were slowly rotting in the same earth they were meant to rest in alongside the remnants of what once made them human, forevermore becoming a cautionary spooky story that people only realise is real when it’s too late. A powerful, affecting, denouement to a film that is soulful, imaginative, imposing and at its very heart a rather sad story of undying grief and vengeance repeatedly lost to time. 

A mesmerising, transfixing, piece of slasher horror.

In A Violent Nature releases this Friday, July 12th, in UK cinemas. And on Shudder at a later date.