Misunderstood Monsters: These Boots Are Made for Walking with ‘In a Violent Nature’
By Matt Konopka
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Welcome fellow monster kids to Misunderstood Monsters. This is where I, Matt Konopka, sink my fangs into all sorts of beasts, ghouls, and creatures from above while I search for the humanity behind their frightening exteriors. From monster favorites such as The Wolf Man to obscure monsters like the whistling Shadmock, there is more to these fiends than bad hair days and gooey tentacles. Within them all is a piece of ourselves.
At the end of May, writer/director Chris Nash unleashed one of the more jaw-ripping horror films of the year, In a Violent Nature. An arthouse inversion of a Friday the 13th film, it follows a Jason Voorhees-style killer named Johnny (Ry Barrett) from his perspective as he stalks and slashes teenagers in the woods. Yet despite heaps of gore — including one kill you’ll have to see to believe — and a traditional (albeit warped) slasher premise, Nash’s film has an oddly mundane feel to it. We’re with this undead fiend as he walks and kills, walks and kills, strapped into his mud-caked boots so firmly that we begin to sense what he does…nothing. No joy in his actions. No reason. He just…does. The filmmaker taps into something with his feature debut that I think many of us can relate to, especially in the current moment…that numb feeling of pushing on without fully understanding why or where we’re going, left with no other way than forward.
For those that have missed this blood-soaked experiment, In a Violent Nature opens on a pair of soon-to-be-slaughtered teens who stumble across a gold locket in the woods. When one of them steals it as a gift for his girlfriend, he awakens Johnny, a local legend killed in a prank gone wrong, said to haunt his domain and seek vengeance on any who enter. The locket just so happens to be a gift from his mother, sending the killer on a violent rampage as he cuts through bodies on his way to getting it back.
Like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers or so many of the unstoppable masked killers that stalk their way through horror cinema, Johnny’s doomed to keep on returning in order to continue work that never seems finished. And isn’t that how it feels for some of us lately? A long trek into an uncertain future, the sort of journey in which we sometimes forget where we’re going or why?
What’s most striking about In a Violent Nature is how Nash sucks the audience through Johnny’s rotten flesh and into his dead inside soul. Shot like a third-person shooter where we (mostly) hang over the behemoth stalker’s shoulder, we’re there with him for everything. The killing. The walking. More killing. More walking. Void of non-diegetic sound. No music. Nothing but the serene atmospherics of nature and the occasional scream to fill the silence. It sounds boring, and it is, to a degree, but boring is the point. Because bored is what Johnny is. Contrasted against hyper-stylized and extravagant kills, his existence seems so dreary by comparison. So empty. So exhausted. Perhaps he took pleasure in his vengeance before. But no longer.
I think all of us experience periods like this at one point or another. Whether by dissatisfaction in our work, our surroundings, whatever, we find ourselves walking in Johnny’s shoes. And walking. And walking. Feeling stuck. As if we’re going nowhere. As if there’s nowhere to go.
Where Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon answered the question of what a slasher villain does in-between killing with sharp humor and extreme dedication, In a Violent Nature responds with quiet apathy. Johnny doesn’t do much of anything besides walk, stalk, and slaughter. He observes his horrid appearance in the mirror. He listens to distant voices. He slumps behind trees like a fatigued runner that’s just run a marathon. We don’t know how many times he’s come back before, but we don’t need an exposition dump around a campfire to tell us that he’s tired. Everyone succumbs to the cold grasp of detachment once in a while. Indifference seeps into our bones. Fatigue wraps us in its arms. And yet we go on, and on, and on.
Intent on garnering empathy for Johnny rather than fear, In a Violent Nature isn’t a scary film — though it is insanely gross — but if anything is frightening about it, it’s how accurately it reflects the current state of humanity. I look at the way tech bros have invaded every aspect of our lives with so-called “advancements” that disrupt nothing but our happiness, while greedy capitalists strip our art of color and imagination so they can churn IP through machines and spit it back out at us like heaps of gruel. We live in a world of grey color palettes, minimalist architecture and AI generated trash aimed at replacing artists. No wonder we’re fucking tired. Living in this world means it isn’t always easy to get up in the morning in our same bed, eat the same breakfast, go to the same job, do the same work, and come back to the same home to do it all over again the next day. Like Johnny, a lot of us probably wish we could just lie in peace for a bit. Maybe do something different for a change. Break free from the chains of monotonous routines.
At the same time, there’s a certain peace as calm as the gentle waters of a camp lake in accepting the tediousness of our individual journeys. Towards the end of the film, slasher familiar Lauren-Marie Taylor enters the story (you might remember her from Friday the 13th Part 2 or Girl’s Nite Out). During her single yet memorable moment, she ponders the why of a bear’s rampage, only to conclude that some things simply are. It’s in their nature. For a slasher film filled with over-the-top gore and tropey characters engaging in pre-marital sex and drugs, In a Violent Nature ends on a surprisingly pensive note unlike almost anything else in the genre. The why doesn’t really matter, does it? We go on because we must. Because we can’t go backwards. Because we have to believe that whatever we’re searching for lies ahead.
Sure, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees sometimes. We want to know we’re going in the right direction. It’s only human. Our nature, you could say. So, we keep walking like Johnny. Because if we keep on keeping on, then wherever it is we’re going…we’ll get there, eventually. 🩸
About
Matt is a writer and wannabe werewolf who began his love of horror at the ripe old age of 3 with Carpenter’s Christine. He has a horror podcast called Killer Horror Critic which he does with his wonderful wife and has previously been published on Bloody Disgusting, Shudder’s The Bite, and Daily Grindhouse. You can also find more of his reviews and ramblings at his blog, KillerHorrorCritic.com.
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