In A Violent Nature

 In a Violent Nature is a new(ish) Canadian horror movie that's been doing the rounds - the rare low-budget slasher that makes it to the big screen in my (wrung) neck of the woods. I only found out it had been on once its week was done, sadly.

 I was a little worried about it because it's got a bit of a gimmick: the cameras cleave mostly to the killer's back as he leisurely carves his way from victim to victim. Kind of like a modern third-person videogame, which is funny because there is a game genre colloquially called 'walking simulator' which fits this pretty well. Critics were comparing it to Terence Malik or the Dardennes, of all people, so it made me worried it'd be a horror movie that wanted to distance itself from the genre (AKA 'elevated horror').
 That's not something I usually shy away from, but in a slasher it seemed especially dishonest, so I was a bit leery. I was wrong, though:  Writer/Director Chris Nash has cooked up a love letter to early slasher films that despite an unorthodox approach and a fair bit of arty prickliness never felt to me like a deconstruction or post-modern wankery. It comes from a genuine place, going as far as being shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio to honor the memory of watching these on old TV sets, without wholly dropping a very smart-arse attitude.

 Thing is, the skimpy story would fully work in one of its inspirations if it were so inclined. The killer, Johnny (Ry Barret), is an undead revenant who comes to life in the first scene after some douchey twenty-somethings steal a locket from his unmarked grave. His backstory, as told by he same group of vacationers around a campfire (one of the rare times the film undocks from the behind-the-killer POV) is solid, pretty creepy, and a clear tip of the hat to Friday the 13th. Homing in on the locket, Johnny murders his way through a bunch of people until there's just a final girl (Andrea Pavlovic) and.... well, that's basically it.

 But the cool thing is that as he's lurking in the background, we get to see snippets of the vacationers and hear parts of their conversations - and that accounts for a lot of the tropes from old-school slashers. The horny pair that slinks away and gets killed, the callous douchebag who pushes his girl away from him and gets the group in trouble, the guy with a history with the killer...

 The unconventional framing works at least as well as a more normal take, I think. My favorite part is when Johnny accidentally lets himself get photographed; nothing comes out of it at the moment, but the next day, after a bunch of murderin', we hear that they saw him in the picture, and it clearly rattled them. You can see how that would work from their perspective, but seeing it second-hand like this is novel, and putting the pieces together yourself is engaging in its own way.

 Other than the storytelling approach the film's style, languid pace, and complete lack of non-diegetic music work together to foment a sense of low-key realism that gives the kills a lot more impact.

 And what a wide array of excellent kills it is - from understated to over the top, comedic to upsetting, near-Terrifier-level-graphic to mostly implied. All technically very well made, and full of really cool details. I loved it how when someone gets two separate nasty injuries. the mixture of pooling blood comes in both arterial and venous tones of red. I have no idea if it's realistic (he said, nervously, for the record) but it shows a clear commitment to excellence.

 It's also very, very funny when it wants to. One of the kills (a solid pun on yoga flexibility) stands out, but the bit that made me laugh the hardest comes right after a walkman-wearing dumbass gets sort-of decapitated; The killer is then shown walking from behind with his victim's head in one hand, dragging the rest of the body with the other. But the headphones are still on the head, still playing, and you can clearly see the cable going from one body part to another. That's just brilliant. That both human remains are used as tools a little later is just a bonus, and also functions as a fun callback to Jason's throwing-bodies-through-windows shenanigans. Layers!

 Johnny's a good, distinct slasher figure: a patient, inscrutable, hulking killer in the Kane Hodder mould. He gets a couple moments of characterization, a distinctive mask and choice of weapons (axe and chained hooks). All good.

 Much as I enjoyed it, I'm not that enamoured of the pacing; Even at 90 minutes, I'd never call it lean, and all those shots of Johnny walking around do pile on. It also tends to hang onto to a scene after it's organically ended for a little too long, a little like Werner Herzog keeps his cameras on the interviewees on his documentaries after they've said their piece. This is definitely not a movie to watch while sleep-deprived, recovering from a long bout of flu.

 The ending is also a bit of a... well, a non-ending, even if it's kind of thematically interesting; It leaves  you with a different type of dread that the ending stingers for these films usually go for, something a bit more existential.

 On the whole I think I liked it more than loved it, but I did like it a lot. An easy recommendation if you're up for some experimentation with a form that's sometimes a little too rigid for its own good.