The red-band trailer for In a Violent Nature is the greatest trailer (so far) for a 2024 release, and that’s kind of the problem. It’s a masterwork of setting a mood and making a promise, and it fulfills the ultimate goal of all social-media-era publicity — it baits its hook with immaculate vibes so you get drawn in without specifics getting in the way.
And that hook here is nigh-irresistible: We’ve got a process-oriented slasher film. We are bound to our hulking killer, but not through a subjective camera that makes our eyes into theirs. We’re bound to Johnny like in a Dardennes film, or Grand Theft Auto. We’re following this brick wall of gristle and gore-oriented (goriented?) tendencies as he works his way through a bunch of friends camping out in the woods, but we’re only seeing things from his perspective. Which is awesome! Until it stops being that and starts trying to split the difference between the Hatchet films and the Terrifier films.
Perhaps this is meant as the inverse of how audiences have started shorthanding “A24 horror” as art films with a moment of horror. In a Violent Nature has been sold as an art film that is, in fact, aiming for Art the Clown’s audience — not Shahram Mokri’s. Advance word on this one leaned hard into the arthouse pedigree — “like if Béla Tarr made a slasher” and “a blend of Gerry and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” were among what I was hearing from the Sundance crew, and as a fan of both horror and formalist art cinema, I was on board. And then came that exquisite red-band trailer, which dots all the i’s and crosses all the t’s for something truly distinctive. But in the very first scene, writer-director Chris Nash starts hedging his bets, using garbage dialogue instead of relying on his remarkable mise-en-scène. (Seriously, for a film with this strong a sense of place and structure, it has Aggro Dr1ft-level dialogue that seemingly exists only for viewers who’ve never seen a slasher before — until the very last five minutes of the film, which are so good that you can’t help but be furious at the qualitative zigzagging that had been going on for the previous hour-and-a-half.)
But the thing that ultimately torpedoes In a Violent Nature is that it has used that disciplined, formalist approach to camera as a Trojan horse. As soon as our killer starts cutting loose and winnowing down the cast, it becomes really obvious that this film doesn’t really care about its artistic reach — it just wants to deliver baroque murderscapes that can outdo whatever else is currently in the zeitgeist. This film’s “yoga kill” is the kind of sequence that can play a crowded festival theater audience like a symphony, something so nasty (in both senses of the word) and gross that you have to respect the ambition. But it’s completely out of place in the rules the film has been establishing for itself. (See also: 2017’s It Comes at Night, which also promised something innovative and spectacular and ultimately ended up wasting its audience’s time.) It’s also a big, flashing warning sign that, sadly, there’s not really anything special to be found here.
Nash can compose the hell out of a frame, using the Academy ratio in a way that calls to mind VHS transfers as well as Alan Clarke/Frederick Wiseman 16 mm. There are sustained sequences herein that are all-timers for the genre. It’s not the kills but rather the process that distinguishes In a Violent Nature, and to some extent the film seems to know that. There’s nothing in the kills to knock Victor Crowley or Art the Clown down a peg or two. But the approach that defines the film (until it doesn’t) is something different, something special, and ultimately it feels disposable once you’re actually experiencing the film.
But yeah, you got me, I watched your movie. And that red-band trailer … that’s still a masterpiece.
