In A Violent Nature
Sundance audiences went apeshit for this graphically violent, brutally gory deconstructed arthouse slasher that methodically follows a resurrected killer’s reign of terror through the remote northern Ontario wilderness. Now’s your chance to witness the carnage.
Audiences at both screenings will get the chance to win amazing prizes from Cabin in the Woods Film Festival and BoneBat Comedy of Horrors Film Festival!
Described as an “ambient slasher film,” In A Violent Nature is subgenre cinema like none before. An experimental take on the ’80s slasher movie, its bare-bones story follows a mute killer (Ry Barrett) as he stalks a group of teenagers through a remote woodland, picking them off in increasingly gruesome fashion. So far, so Friday the 13th, but where progenitors favored the perspective of the jock and the final girl, this esoteric reworking observes events through the eyes of its killer, with no musical score and little dialogue beyond which is overheard on the monster’s bloody course. And what a monster he is! Vengeful lumberjack Johnny is clear riff on Jason Voorhees, but director Chris Nash puts his own stamp on the motif, giving Johnny an intimidating original look and grisly murder implements in the drag hooks he wields. A disfigured face and mommy issues further honor the slasher greats. Emphasizing long takes by cinematographer Pierce Derks within an unsettlingly shot Ontario wilderness, Nash draws inspiration from the work of auteurs Gus Van Sant and Terrence Malick. However, it remains faithful to the subgenre’s bloodthirsty underpinnings in its extreme violence and gnarly practical effects. In A Violent Nature doesn’t so much reinvent the wheel as mercilessly warp the thing into a grotesque, curiously haunting echo of its former self.
—Joel Harley
- Director: Chris Nash
- Principal Cast: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone
- Country: Canada
- Year: 2024
- Running Time: 94 min.
- Producer: Shannon Hanmer, Peter Kuplowsky
- Screenplay: Chris Nash
- Cinematographers: Pierce Derks
- Editors: Alex Jacobs
- Filmography: Debut Feature Film
- Language: English
- US Distributor: Shudder
- International Sales: Charades