Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: IN A VIOLENT NATURE [Sundance Film Festival 2024 - Park City, Utah]
The context of a horror film always comes through the perspective of which we see it. "In A Violent Nature" [Midnight] more than aptly approaches the metaphor. It is about taking the primal and ridding it of all conscience and motivation...it just is. The antagonist here in Johnny [Ry Barrett] is a figure of evil, and his only progression is that by itself and nothing else. Once you understand that fact, his simple progression (save for one scene) is all that is required. The movie is alot of following and walking. Part Kubrickian lulling while also a build up, writer/director Chris Nash knows this is a baseline of how to bring the audience in. This is a slasher film almost purely from the killer's perspective. There is a sense of routine, a sense of rote but also just a really sick sense of humor. One specific kill on a cliff and one in a wood shed are particuarly vivid as the premiere night audience (and it is getting harder to shock people) were wowed a couple times. Granted this is a Shudder release so their films can go much further into gore and unrated territory than most conventional films maybe looking for acquisition.
The basis of the concept reflects around a tailesman buried in the woods of Northern Ontario that awakes the beast when it is taken by some young adults that don't know what they have unleashed and how to bring it back in. Johnny is that faceless killer but quickly finds his identiry (specifically through some interesting trinkets in a ranger station). He continues on his spree methodically. There is no stopping him. There is no reasoning with him. But in the film, there is also no music. Johnny's walking is the pace. The essence of his nature and the lulling of nature itself is what makes this experiment work. It is not a film for everyone but it has its own beauty all the same, despite its brutality. The eventual resolution is one of simple logic but Nash knows again the lulling, especially in a truck scene which keeps anticipating something . Interestingly enough (as talked about in the Q&A), this scene was a homage and reference to something else. But it speaks to the essence that the memory lingers long after the event. Johnny is that danger lurkimg in the woods, that animal that is not killing to survive but almost simply to keep the balance. A-
By Tim Wassberg
