phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2024

In a Violent Nature (2024)



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 34m
Country: Canada
Language: English
Genre Tags: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Plot Summary: When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 70-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: What if Friday the 13th was filmed like a documentary from Jason's point of view? All the slasher tropes, like plot, annoying victims, and grisly deaths remain the same, but by flipping the POV, all tension dissipates. It's fascinating! Every expected jump scare or sudden rush of action never happens. The new tension is an unending feeling of anticipation for something that never arrives. Keeping the camera almost entirely focused on the killer or his viewpoint imparts a voyeuristic feel, and implicates the audience in the violence. Instead of being a movie about people camping in the woods when a monster shows up, it's a movie about a monster roaming the woods and stumbling across some people to kill. There's some amount of empathy for the killer, who is just wandering the forest, looking to get his mom's necklace back.


Outside Reviews:

Clint Worthington
3.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

The most fascinating thing about Chris Nash’s hyperviolent slasher experiment “In a Violent Nature” is that it’s not scary. At least, not in the way that the “Friday the 13th“-esque splatter flicks he’s clearly riffing on used to be. There are no jump scares, few bouts of high-wire tension, and no ambiguity about who the final girl will be. And yet, “Violent Nature” ends up one of the most fascinating, oddly serene horror entries of the year so far, precisely because it flips the mechanics of the slasher on their head and asks you to imagine what it’d be like to be Jason Voorhees — a simple, demonically-risen man who gets up and clocks into work every day to do what he does best: disembowel.


Anna McKibbin
B+ - A slasher in touch with its surroundings

Despite occasionally straying into familiar territory, Nash and his collaborators spend an impressive amount of time slowly exploring the misunderstood mechanics of the slasher. With In A Violent Nature, Nash crafts something entirely new; composed, near and real. But the film’s sense of tone and timing prove that he also intimately understands why audiences were always invested in these marathons of blood, gore, and guts.