Campground horror is when teenagers are up against an immovable malevolent force. The Friday the 13th movies set the groundwork here and ought to be receiving the same attention as other ongoing late-era franchises. But, along the way both Jason Vorhees and the rights for the franchise went to hell (seriously, follow the court drama, it’s impossible to make a new Friday). The better way to go about it is to make In A Violent Nature, a spiritual descendent of the Friday movies that operates under the lens of a shifting perspective — here, we are experientially seeing the movie through the killer’s eyes. This shift radicalizes the format while paying homage to movies that have given us glimpses of the killer’s perspective before, like the Black Christmas and Halloween movies.
We do not want the killer to lose in these movies. Not really. That’s why we’ll come back for second, third, and twelfth servings of a make-believe serial killer splattering some teens. Because it’s cathartic. Because the lust of teens can be met with bloodlust. The preying men who just want to sleep with some women at camp can be picked off and the woman can be the Final Girl. The conventions are clear and set in cement. Whether we’re taking a nature tour with this new Ambient Killer, as he’s so-called, or venturing through the woods with a teen who is about to get stabbed a lot, the overall effect is the same. We might want the same thing to happen. We are sympathetic to the killer. Usually, he is returning some generational or past trauma but sometimes it’s just about an animalistic bloodlust. Either way, we want to see him make up some ground, stack up some bodies, and maybe let the prettiest one get away, and then we can go home feeling good about that.
Partially these attitudes in horror movies come from the misplaced conservative notions of the times in which they are made. They are anti-promiscuity movies, in one way, and in another, they reflect a time of theatrical release where experimentation and middle-budget movies could still randomly take off and really accomplish something. We’ve changed the political shape of the horror genre and the societal messaging within it over the years but the genre remains one of the only evergreen spaces for inner-concept experimentation.
So, it’s a natural turn for In A Violent Nature to oscillate frequently between being just a pleasant stroll through some woods to being the most brutal slasher deconstruction we have seen since Terrifier 2 (2016). It aims higher than Terrifier’s adventures of Art the Clown, but ultimately achieves the same effect. It’s good and old-school in its slasher approach, while carefully renovating the interiority of the killer’s place in movies like these.
What sets it apart immediately are the inspirations from which director Chris Nash is pulling. In interviews, he’s not mentioned other slashers as primary influences. Still, he has talked about the significance of the works of Gus Van Sant — the way it feels being in the environment in Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003), or Last Days (2015) — and you fully feel that influence in the heart of the film’s ethereal woodsiness, the way it values space and nature over humanity, or perhaps insists that nature is where our truest humanity is expressed, and people bring it all down.
By working through layers of sound, setting, and atmosphere, Chris Nash’s new slasher achieves a primacy in the genre, while operating just outside of its conventions. It feels as though the mold is broken open here, that the movie can create its terms for the progression of its slashing parts and that the actual wonder of it all is just about exploring some woods, just being present, what the killer does between the killing becomes as vitally important as his brutal dismemberment of the bodies. It’s a treat for genre fans who have seen it all, who need to see something different, and it will provide just enough that this audience will have to try it on and see — you’re not getting Friday the 13th, but maybe you can have something better.