My friend excitedly told me about a new film that he had seen on Shudder recently and said the kills were something else! In fact, he said the film felt like a breath of fresh air especially as it was basically a slasher film made for a new audience. I finally got to see the film yesterday and on a cinema screen rather than on my TV.

A stolen locket wakes up the rotting corpse of Johnny, who comes back to reclaim said stolen piece of jewellery with murder in mind.

I kept thinking of many reference points when I watched In A Violent Nature. The main one was Friday the 13th: The Game as the movie felt like I was watching someone playing the game. This sounds like an insult but it isn’t. There’s something satisfying about watching the many videos on YouTube of people playing such a fantastic and gory video game.

The film also made me ask the question- what do serial killers in slasher films do when they’re not killing? This movie answers that question- they walk around until they meet their next prey. The killer definitely smashes his 10,000 steps a day. I hope he wears a pedometer.

I also kept thinking of The Fog especially as the kills in the newer film contained the same sound effects of breaking bones, impliments entering flesh and severed spines. This is the perfect time to talk about the murders and the effects that punctuate In A Violent Nature. My friend was right- these kills kick ass! I exclaimed ‘Ooofff!’ very loudly at every one of these scenes. Whoever dreamt up these ways of killing the irritating teens in this movie deserves some kind of award for their ingenuity. Or maybe they need some kind of psychological assessment. The yoga kill (you’ll know what I’m referring to if you’ve seen this film) is a thing of bloody, visceral genius.

My other reference point was Jeff Lieberman’s masterpiece Just Before Dawn in that just as his film tweaked the slasher genre and had fun with it’s (by then) staid conventions, In A Violent Nature does the same thing. I kept thinking that it must be hard to make something so fresh and innovative within a genre which had been done to death (pun not included) decades earlier. But it really isn’t. You just need to think outside the box. It’s great that In A Violent Nature has done just that. It’s gleefully lo-fi and low budget, has an air all of its own and has more mystery, backstory and character than ANY of the turgid horror film fare pumped out by major studios nowadays.

In A Violent Nature has divided opinion online. People either love it or hate it. I’m betting that the detractors hate the film for all of the reasons why I love it. I also bet that they love the big-budget CGI remake vacuousness of the IT remake, the jump-scare heavy products which normally involve lights going out and then coming back on with some computer generated being suddenly appearing (the trailers for these films act as deterrents from me ever wasting my time and money watching them) or the fanboy appeasing bilge that was the recent Halloween trilogy.

If In A Violent Nature has alienated these people then that’s a huge reason why I like this film even more.

But even though I did enjoy this film massively, it isn’t without flaws. There are major drags in the last act, there’s a kill involving a tree cutter that felt underdone and not executed (again, pun not included) as well as it could have been (budget limitations?) and an ending that was massively underwhelming even though it involved Lauren Marie Taylor from Friday the 13th Part 2 (great to see her onscreen again). There’s also a really terrible song used for the closing credits as well.

But for a film that feels different from the mega-budget horror films that have become the norm for Hollywood nowadays, In A Violent Nature opens doors for more innovative, daring and idiosyncratic horror movies. Here’s hoping.

3 and a half out of 5 stars