Divalicious Review! In A Violent Nature—Slasher Has Never Been So Meditative
By Caroline Cao | December 11, 2024 | Celebrity & Culture
Bosnian-Canadian Actress Andrea Pavlovic strikes a thousand-yard stare that penultimately closes In A Violent Nature. She’s the Final Girl of Chris Nash’s rather novel slasher film. The camera loiters on the density of foliage, her panicked eyes scanning for the masked serial killer. Pavlov’s stare sears the screen as if we’re subjected to her PTSD (at this moment, Pavlovic shares the screen with veteran scream queen Lauren-Marie Taylor, playing a matron Good Samaritan). Long after the movie ends, we absorb the impact of the events on her soul, as if feeling there’s always a killer in the woods.
The film is adroit at stirring the queasy paranoia that closes the Final Girl’s arc. This stare shot echoes previous scenes where the camera loiters on the forest—a frame that lingers long enough for the viewer to play “Where’s the Killer?” in a “Where’s Waldo?” fashion in an attempt to find the shape of the killer.
And interestingly, Pavlovic’s Final Girl is not a screentime protagonist. The camera’s sympathy is not for the teens fleeting from the masked serial killer, but in fact, it’s for the killer, the ever-enigmatic Johnny (Ry Barrett). The premise perhaps is based on memetic jokes about the languish hours serial killers are willing to wait in the shadows before they slish-and-slash their prey, usually camping teens, although it has a dead serious bent. A less patient viewer would complain about the nature of long takes or the lagging walk of the serial killer. But that sets In a Violent Nature apart from popcorn slasher fare.
As we follow the killer, we also become privy to eavesdropped conversations between camping teenagers or park rangers. It would dawn on the long-time horror viewer that said dialogue is modeled after run-of-the-mill horror movie plotting. First-time viewers are tasked with putting together the puzzle pieces of history that unravel.
Nash also has one choice that would sound like a no-no in slasher films: no music. Whereas a conventional horror film editor would frame the killer’s gnarled face as a jump-scare (and it could be an effective one), In A Violent Nature, there are surprising choices made that meditate on the history of the killer, including his prime motive to retrieve something lost. You can leave those woods, but those woods won’t leave you.
Joshua Obra and Ajanae Stephenson also star.
Photo credit: IFC Films
