The Poppies of Terra #31 - Naughty By Nature

I’ve seen the future of horror, and it’s looking back at us.

In a Violent Nature, the feature directorial debut of Chris Nash, depicts a mute, hulking, zombie-like killer–who we will come to learn was, in a previous life, named Johnny–picking off a group of folks who have disturbed him from his supernatural slumber beneath the ground by removing a gold locket from his resting place. If, say, you get fidgety thinking about the consequences of the heist gone wrong in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, you may get sweaty palms watching this incredibly gory slasher, the ultimate cautionary tale about the perils of messing with other people’s stuff.

Or, then again, as directed by Nash–in a 4:3 aspect ratio, featuring no score, the camera often simply lumbering behind Johnny as he trudges through the woods, rather than following the meagerly developed human characters–the film may be more simply about trying to reinvigorate genre tropes. The idea of a “reverse” slasher in which we experience events from the subjective perspective of the killer has been done before–Maniac, Angst, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, American Psycho, to name a few–and it’s even been done through an arthouse aesthetic, courtesy of Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built. But this is a different animal, because we’re not dealing with a human narrative subjectivized by a perpetrator of violence. Rather, Nash steeps us into a kind of rolling unconsciousness. This might be the closest to purely instinctual, non-thinking predatory savagery we can get, framed by seemingly idyllic and peaceful nature. How interesting you find this approach will depend largely on your desire for an ambient nature documentary punctuated by the occasional outburst of extreme violence.

Pierce Derks handles the film’s cinematography with confidence. For those who complain that watching a brute clump and plod through fields or forests without a word is somnorific, Alex Jacobs’ editing offers nice cuts in those sequences that shorten the proceedings significantly, establishing the passage of hours in minutes without sacrificing the immersiveness of the environment. I imagine that fans of slasher kills put off by the tranquil connective tissue may end up creating a highlights reel of this film’s carnage, which would make for quite a blood-soaked short. Those who prefer the shots of wandering around may opt to go for a walk instead.

I find the art of constraint fascinating. How did Ernest Vincent Wright manage to write a novel (Gadsby) without words containing the letter “e”? How did Alexander Sokurov pull off the one-take feature film Russian Ark? Was Steve Reich really able to create something musical using only the clapping patterns of two performers? Self-imposed technical restrictions can be engrossing, demanding that we meet them on their own terms. In A Violent Nature doesn’t quite rise to this level. The camera doesn’t always stay behind Johnny. The perspective shifts and even cuts away; angles change on occasion; during a water sequence, the camera remains at the edge of the lake rather than following Johnny in, or hovering above him; the final ten minutes or so focus on a different character entirely; early on, we see a completely unreal memory/hallucination literalized on a mirror. Some of these choices may have been the result of budgetary limits or practical difficulties, but regardless, for me they tend to blunt the film’s sharpness, diluting its effect. It’s less of a virtuosic tightrope walk and more of a well-executed bungee jump with several jostly rebounds.

The human character’s dialogue and behavior is on a par with B-grade slashers, performed with as much believability. If this is intentional, it’s fair to ask if this recreation of what’s come before works against the picture–because part of the charm of campy slasher films is that they were not ironically self-aware, but rather earnestly trying to deliver thrills to an uncritical audience. Here the terms seem to be inverted: this film seems thrust in the direction of viewers with a certain sophistication, and yet becomes at least partially trapped in the artifice of emulating cliche and crassness. Can you inject life into genre conventions by centering in on an undead juggernaut? Johnny has some level of cognition, to be sure, because he hunts and uses tools. But even that raises questions: in certain moments, he is slow to comprehend simple realities, while in others he seems to swiftly know how to operate particular devices or mechanisms. Is the film’s somber dedication to naturalism supposed, in the end, to be humorous or satirical? The Hatchet film franchise declares a sense of fun from its opening salvo. Is that level of engagement off-limits here? There is at least one–much-lauded–kill that suggests Johnny has a, let's say, twisted sense of humor. Or is it just unchecked curiosity?

I appreciate film experimentalism, but it’s not difficult to predict that horror fans with more conventional leanings will find only their patience tried by Nash’s approach. The narrative touches that, even slightly, humanize Johnny, make him less threatening; those that lean into his unrelenting, mindless quest for the locket make him scary, but drab and monotone. Ti West’s X and Pearl show that a complete structural overhaul isn’t required to get the blood pumping in the slasher subgenre. How much is Johnny’s disembodied spirit animating a mutated, partially rotted corpse, and how much are we as viewers expected to animate a film assembled from the inverted and hollowed out innards of its predecessors? 

Without delving into the specifics, there’s a long kill in which Johnny first sort of tests the proof of concept with a log of wood. Then he gets down to business. I can relate to In A Violent Nature in that way. If Nash and his team can come by a bigger budget, and adhere more closely to their own formal rules of engagement, we might have something more meaty into which to sink our teeth.