“We should take a lot more cues from music and just try to smash genres together.” Well said, Chris Nash. Hitting this week, his terrific new film, In a Violent Nature, is indeed a “smash” of different film genres and styles. It’s no wonder, then, that the movie is almost universally praised by critics and will surely be discussed and dissected by cinephiles for years to come. It’s a simple revenge premise — a buried and mutilated corpse is awakened once a special locket is removed from its forested location, prompting the risen “Johnny” to seek its retrieval and horrifically kill anyone who comes in his path. However, the strikingly artistic end result might just floor you in unexpected ways.
We recently caught up with writer-director Nash to learn more about his new “vibe movie” and its show-stopping moments, and why he doesn’t feel that In a Violent Nature is redefining the slasher genre, despite all the buzz. You can watch our interview discussion above and read on for more.
In a Violent Nature: ‘So Much of It Is Tone and Vibe’
In a Violent Nature
4/5
In a Violent Nature is a 2024 horror-slasher film written and directed by Chris Nash that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024. A group of campers in the middle of the wilderness stumble across a fire watchtower and discover a locket buried beneath its charred ruins. However, by unearthing the locket, they’ve invited the wrath of its prior owner and now must survive the rampage of a supernatural killer looking to retrieve his possession.
- Release Date
- May 31, 2024
- Director
- Chris Nash
- Cast
- Lauren-Marie Taylor , Andrea Pavlovic , Ry Barrett , Reece Presley
- Runtime
- 1h 34m
- Writers
- Chris Nash
- Studio(s)
- Shudder
- Distributor(s)
- Shudder , IFC Films
The reviews are in, and terms like “ambient slasher” have been used in breaking down Nash’s new film. “It’s a bit of a sleeping pill, but yeah, I don’t take any offense to it. I think it’s definitely a vibe movie, as much as it has pretty graphic, unsettling kills in it,” he told MovieWeb. “So much of it is tone and vibe that, yeah, if anybody wants to call it an ambient slasher, that’s very fitting to me.”
The visually arresting tracking shots used by Terrence Malick and Gus Van Sant also come to mind in picking apart In a Violent Nature, as we follow along behind killer Johnny as he pursues his helpless victims through the forest. In a Violent Nature is captured from the sort of POV of the killer himself, which is a lovely alternative approach to the conventions of slasher films, where we’re usually stuck with expendable characters the whole time. There are other innovative techniques used throughout In a Violent Nature, but Nash shot down the notion that he’s redefining any genres here:
“I think that
it’s basically reciting a definition of what a slasher is
. Like, 95% of this film is doing absolutely nothing new. And it’s just that 5% that makes it different. But I don’t think it redefines anything. And I think that we rely on so many tropes that are established, and we lean into them so hard, just to lift ourselves up to be where we want to be to make the film. So yeah,
I don’t think that it does redefine anything. And that was never the intent. And I’m not just saying that to avoid any fanboy ire.
”
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Meanwhile, one might draw parallels to throwbacks like the original Friday the 13th. “That’s an incredibly flattering comparison that I feel would be completely unearned. But yeah, absolutely I would welcome that 100%,” said Nash. “But still, there’s a whole breadth of films under all those other characters, where it’s just one entry out. So yeah, I’m very honored.”
No spoilers here, but the ending is certainly thought-provoking, on top of the artistic flair throughout — so we had to ask if Nash wanted to comment on what themes he aimed to convey with his seemingly contemplative film. “I have read some reactions to it where I’m like, ‘OK, that’s dead on. That’s exactly what I was going for,'” he said. “But yeah, I just don’t feel like it’s my place to say what or what this movie is not.”
1:59
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Chris Nash’s Influences and Campfire Tales
Nash also opened up to us about the critically acclaimed classics that truly inspired his vision for In a Violent Nature. “Ones that we definitely revisited a few times: Gerald Kargl’s Angst, which follows a serial killer in much the same way, just throughout one day in his life after getting released from an institution. That was definitely a huge influence,” explained Nash, who added:
“And also,
Alan Clarke’s TV film
Elephant
, that one definitely had an influence on Van Sant as well, which just is a series of short character tableaus following unnamed individuals as they go through, walk on streets and in corridors and in buildings, and ultimately, just kill people and leave. Those were both films that really influenced us continually, going through it.”
Shudder
In a Violent Nature also offers an original “campfire” story, in terms of how the killer Johnny comes to be reawakened and brought to murderous ways again and again. It’s shrouded in mystery, but some of the victims we meet in the film also reveal bits and pieces about the mythology while they’re out vacationing in Johnny’s wooded headquarters.
“I love the campfire-tale aspect of any film, whenever characters are telling a story to other characters,” Nash told MovieWeb. “When a character in the film is telling another character a story, and we don’t see the flashback of that happening, there’s a legitimacy to it that I don’t understand, where it’s like, ‘Oh no, this is real… This is a real story we’re hearing.’ And I have no idea why that is. But it’s something I really enjoy, like a story within the story.”
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And something that slasher and horror fans will enjoy from Nash’s film: the wildly elaborate and horrifically violent killings that are sprinkled throughout the film’s 94-minute duration — one of which, involving a log splitter, might just leave you wondering whether you just hallucinated the whole, elongated sequence. “The log splitter scene was supposed to go on much longer… and many more limbs were supposed to fall victim to that log splitter,” Nash told us. He elaborated:
“That was one of the last things we shot in the film. And we were all set up, and it was like an overnight shoot, and we were just running out of time. So we had to make an executive decision, because everything was kind of in a one-take, like, the whole body was rigged.
So we had one shot at everything. We had to make an executive decision
to be like, ‘OK, well, what’s the minimal amount of limbs that we can get away with without kneecapping the gag so much?'”
We can’t wait to see what Nash has in store next on the filmmaking front, but he didn’t want to share too much about it. “We’ve got a nice cinematic history, and I think we should take a lot more cues from music and just try to smash genres together and see what comes out of that,” he said. “So anything in the future is kind of experimenting in that realm.”
In the meantime, Shudder and IFC Films will release In a Violent Nature exclusively in theaters May 31.
