#41: In a Violent Nature
Release Date: May 31st, 2024
Format: Theater (The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, CA)
Written by: Chris Nash
Directed by: Chris Nash
3.5 Stars
Roughly ten years ago there was a trend of cinema fans re-editing classic movie trailers to mimic the style of a completely different genre of film. The one that stands out in my mind is a reimagined trailer for The Shining, cut into the style of a trailer for a ‘90s heartwarming family comedy. So instead of a wave of blood pouring from an elevator to cacophonous synth music, as seen in the original trailer, we get a dopey narrator announcing pleasantly, “Meet Jack Torrance. He’s a writer looking for inspiration.” This is followed by out of context shots such as Danny playing in the snow and the family happily driving up to The Overlook Hotel.
I was thinking of this mid-’10s trend as I watched In a Violent Nature. I could imagine its writer/director Chris Nash sitting around watching ‘80s-teenagers-in-the-woods slasher classics, such Friday the 13th, and its dozens of lesser imitations, such as The Burning, and thinking, “Why not take this beloved, classic horror trope and simply shoot it in a different style?”
It’s a remarkably simple and effective idea. I really liked it.
The traditional approach to great horror is to keep your monster off screen as long as possible. The thinking goes that nothing on screen can actually match what the viewer has in their head (and it’s a whole lot cheaper for the effects department to get the thing into four or five scenes, as opposed to twenty or thirty scenes). Examples famously include Jaws, Alien, and The Fly.
In fact I just finished watching Child’s Play, and in researching the movie afterwards I found out that a 2-hour rough cut was screened for test audiences in Los Angeles and they hated it. What did the producers decide to do? They cut 30 minutes of mostly Chucky footage and immediately audiences responded more positively. The feedback was that the movie was more suspenseful and scary. Less is more, as the saying goes.
Ballsy of Chris Nash to see this formula for effective horror, honed to a fine edge over the last fifty plus years, and recklessly abandon it.
Instead of banal scenes of empty dialogue around campfires by our protagonist teens, as the audience wonders just where the killer is out in the dark, he decides to show our killer walking through the forest in full daylight. And it won’t be a 5-second shot. He shows him walking for minutes at a time. He shows where he’s coming from, and in the distance of the shot, he shows where he’s going. And he shows him get there, and then shows him go to his next destination. It’s methodical, not mysterious.
There is no suspense of the unknown. There is the suspense of the inevitable.
Another part of the formula for an effective outdoors slasher movie says the cinematography should not call attention to itself. Put a stationary camera with the teens. Don’t overlight it. Use the dark for terror and to mask your budget constraints.
Again, In a Violent Nature goes in the opposite direction, against conventional wisdom. Nash directs the film like a nature documentary. It’s beautifully and naturally lit, with long (dare I say peaceful) Steadicam shots. No longer does darkness create the terror. The terror is of our killer juxtaposed against the beauty of the Ontario, Canada scenery.
This reminds me of a chapter in Moby Dick where Herman Melville reflects on the occurrence of color in nature. Black is not the most terroristic color in nature, according to Melville, but in fact it is white. It’s an unnatural, horrific color. Creatures that are white have no intent to hide, and inspire fear in humanity. The horror of a massive, white sperm whale carrying you to the depths of the ocean to crush and eat you is much greater than a naturally occurring, blackish sperm whale.
I can’t say with any certainty that Nash used Melville as a source of inspiration, but it’s clearly obvious he’s inspired to reimagine a formula that was written by great horror filmmakers generations ago and perfected over decades. It’s this counter-intuitiveness and visionary confidence that makes In a Violent Nature a great horror film.
