In a Violent Nature (2024)

Have you ever heard of a movie whose premise is so unexpected, so genius, that you can't believe you never thought of it yourself? I had that experience when I heard of In a Violent Nature, an arthouse love letter to Friday the 13th but with a twist: the film focuses almost exclusively on the perspective of the killer. No music, minimal dialogue, tons of looooooooong atmospheric shots of an ’80s slasher villain silently striding through gorgeous forest, lake, and fieldscapes? What a brilliant idea to take that creaky old formula so many of us grew up on and loved and strip away the conventions to see, Michelle-Pfeiffer-style, what lies beneath.

Having grown up and experienced the inevitable heart-death foretold by Allison Reynolds, I didn't know I could still get this excited about a movie. But as a lifelong Friday the 13th fan, when I heard about the concept, it made me think about my favorite franchise through a completely new lens. Why had I never wondered what exactly Jason was doing, what he saw, what he thought? I bought my ticket, waited impatiently for Nicole Kidman to step in that damn puddle, and thought, just as it began, Yes, yes, oh God, yes!!!

And then... mostly... nooooooooo.

We open with some heard-but-not-seen teens in the woods poking around in what could only aspire to one day be a ruined shanty—the Pamela Voorhees Head Museum is luxurious in comparison—and then steal a golden locket hanging improbably on a pole. They leave; silence settles in... and then the leafy, muddy ground starts gurgling and from a secret grave, Johnny (Canada's answer to Jason Voorhees with more than a dash of My Bloody Valentine) claws his way out, eerie and quiet. 

Feeling a little like Lisa Simpson, eager to hear her hero Malibu Stacy speak, I was thrilled to see what they would do with this moment. Alone and the sole figure onscreen for who knows how long, what would Jason/Johnny do now that we're centering ourselves around his perspective? Apparently, not much. And that was the first inkling I got that impressive as writer/director Chris Nash's vision for this project was, he wasn't going far enough. The character merely steps outside and starts walking. And walking. And walking.

I was disappointed that we didn't stay in this scene longer and really focus on more character-building—or at least as much as is possible when you're dealing with a mute undead creature. Did coming back to life hurt? Was there any disorientation? Maybe a moment or two of panic or some other emotion hinted at when he realizes the locket (which belonged to his mother and was the only thing keeping his soul at rest) is gone? I get that perhaps some of the point of this movie is that we see there are limitations to how fully drawn the character can be, but isn't the full point of this movie that we're supposed to get a new, deeper appreciation for this type of character? 

The best scene in the entire movie does just that. Johnny (also a former tragically dead child seeking vengeance somehow returned to life in a hulking dad bod) finds a tiny truck keychain charm and we get not only the first clear glimpse of his face, but also a surprising, thought-provoking, emotionally resonant reaction. It's genius, and we needed more of it. And I'm not saying that the film needed to recast the character in a sympathetic mold, Disney style. (Although in a perfect world Emma Stone would’ve passed on Cruella to star as Johnny.) But if we're finally getting the chance to see the previously invisible half of every ’80s slasher film—what does it feel like to be Jason driven by dark and complicated forces rather than Corey Feldman, playing with monster makeup and shaving his head—why not make it deeper and more interesting than the source material ever was?

I was also disheartened by the fact that the film quickly loses its nerve to follow its brave and potentially alienating concept: a stylized approach that turns supposed low art into high, keeping things mysterious, leaving things unsaid and unseen. Instead, it weakens itself by leaning too hard on the human characters and their perspective. 

For example, there's a frustrating campfire scene where the legend of Johnny is mansplained to us by some partying youngsters while the killer watches, unseen, from the dark woods, but instead of sticking with him and seeing this tired old trope play out from a new and exciting perspective, we instead circle tightly around the teens, over and over, De Palma style. (The same scene in Friday the 13th Part 2 does it better and creepier, and Jason is nowhere to be found in it.) And the last 20 minutes of the film makes another odd choice, transferring the focus completely away from Johnny—who, SPOILER ALERT, is not seen again—and onto the final surviving teen. But the oddest choice of all is the final 10 minutes, which might actually make some viewers who expect a satisfying payoff or even a coherent point angry. (It says a lot that the film's most substantial speaking role—shoutout to the wonderful Lauren-Marie Taylor of Friday the 13th Part 2, selling the shit out of every second onscreen—should have been cut completely.) 

Another impressive performance is Ry Barrett as Johnny, who does so much with so little that I think he could have gotten some mainstream critical praise if the script had offered him more opportunities. Sadly, the less said about the other performances in the film, the better, especially Johnny's first victim, a crotchety local homeowner who can't seem to make any of his surprisingly large number of lines (mostly variations on "help!" and "why are you doing this?") convincing—the effect was so jarring it took me completely out of the movie. And, for as much vitriol as all ’80s slashers took for thin characterization and less-than-talented acting, apparently the movie magic enabled by the traditional victim-centered approach was a lot more forgiving. Seeing Johnny's more straightforward POV as he slooooooowly approaches multiple victims does no favors for the nagging sense that almost all of them would have easily escaped if playing by the rules of reality.

But of course, they can't escape, now can they? Otherwise we'd miss the gore effects, which I think in at least one scene outdoes the complete output of the entire Friday the 13th series. It involves a yoga enthusiast who is apparently so centered and Zen that she sees Johnny slowly approaching, turns to see that she is at a sloped precipice which seems safe enough to try and scoot down, but instead opts to wait patiently and helpfully until he gets close enough to start one of the most convoluted and graphic kills in screen history. It's interesting to compare her totally silent and calm reaction to Taylor's famous death scene in Friday the 13th Part 2, where she has what seems to be a more realistic response to being trapped while a menacing figure with a weapon advances to kill her.

If that's your thing, you'll enjoy the grim creativity that goes into many of the deaths, but I felt like this was a missed opportunity. We've already seen Jason and so many others kill countless people in countless ways onscreen for decades—exciting? boring? gross?—so I was hoping that we'd get something different here. Not that I think the violence should have been toned down, but I wish the deaths had been less about spectacle and more tied to deepening Johnny's character. The person who wronged Johnny the most by stealing the necklace gets a relatively quick death maybe halfway through the film, while the last victim, who is so inconsequential to the plot you would be forgiven for wondering who he even is, bears the ultimate brunt of Johnny's outlandish rage near the end. Shouldn't it have been the other way around? 

Even with the movie's weaknesses, Nash deserves a ton of credit for the vision, and there are some gorgeous shots in here that I would watch the movie again just to see, whether that's Johnny stalking through a field under a pinkish purple twilight sky or Johnny, backlit by a harsh cabin exterior lamp, reaching his hand toward the camera to touch an image on a corpse's shirt that triggers a memory. 

I'm intrigued to see what Chris Nash does next and I'm glad In a Violent Nature exists, even if I was disappointed. I was hoping like crazy (Ralph style) to see a slow-moving arthouse Jason character study, an ’80s Sofia Coppola slasher, an obsessive dive into the mythology and mind of a monster that we've only ever seen tantalizing glimpses of before, or maybe even the ultimate bow to tie up and meta-comment on this particular form of slasher. Instead, we get an interesting experience with flashes of a better, more challenging movie's bones. I was probably just expecting too much, wanting this to be the movie my childhood self didn't realize he had always wanted to see. But isn't that the dream that keeps us all watching new horror movies? To feel what we felt back then but again in a new, better way? I shouldn't be in any hurry to get over that.

After all, maybe in the end we're lucky there is still more to say, more to explore, more to race through the dark woods to find. Maybe we're lucky this movie wasn't transcendently perfect enough to give us the final cinematic word on all of the Jasons and Johnnys (and, of course, Pamel(egend)as). I think I'd miss them. 3 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—Jonathan Riggs
July 5, 2024