In a Violent Nature
Director: Chris Nash
Release year: 2024
It’s rare that a film comes along in the horror space and asks questions about the form. Cabin in the Woods did it back in 2011, and this does it with the slasher genre, subverting its conventions in pointed and interesting ways. I knew too much in advance of seeing this for it to be a surprise—I can imagine this would have been even more impactful if I’d gone in blind.
A group of teens explore woods where a man, Johnny, was killed decades before, and find a locket hanging on a pipe in an abandoned hut. One of them takes the locket for his girlfriend, not realising it’s on Johnny’s grave. Johnny climbs out of the earth to methodically track the teens through the woods to get the locket back, picking them off in increasingly violent ways.
The camera tracks Johnny from behind for most of the film. It’s a video game point of view that goes back to the original Lara Croft. Nature is ever-present on the soundtrack, with bird calls, the crunch of grass underfoot, wind in the trees, the buzz of flies, but all Johnny is listening for are human voices and car engines. At the ranger station he looks at the displays and lifts a photograph. When he walks into a house and sees a similar locket, he remembers his father giving it to him as a symbol of love from his mother.
The only character of note amongst the teens is Kris, accidental holder of the locket, who sees Johnny’s bottomless pool of rage at the locket’s theft, and who wisely leaves it for him to collect. On the road, she’s picked up by a woman who tells a story about the random violence of bears, but that’s a misdirection—we’ve seen the killer is not random, has suffered terrible losses, and his fury doesn’t stop even in death.