Since today is the eve of All Hallow’s Eve, I thought what better way to celebrate it than by dusting off one of my old pieces; lost to time like some eldritch tome of curses. I’ve also chopped and changed a few things since I’ve a had a fair bit of time to reflect upon my experience. So, while it may not be fresh, hopefully this little morsel is spooky enough to send shivers – even a small tingle – down your spine. Enjoy!

The above image was taken at The Overlook Film Festival and posted to Umbrella Entertainment’s socials on the 26th of July, 2024. In it, we see Late Night with the Devil star, David Dastmalchian in a party store vampire costume, posed next to a menacing Jason Voorhees look alike in an old school smoke hood (a Vajen-Bader smoke helmet to be specific).

While I did not know it yet, this was my first time meeting Johnny: the monster from Canadian filmmaker Chris Nash’s debut feature: In a Violent Nature. I’d been invited to an advanced screening by a friend, and going off the title alone, I walked into a barren Crown cinemas on a particularly quiet Monday night knowing and expecting nothing. It wasn’t until a quarter of the way through the film, when Johnny uses a headless corpse to break a museum cabinet and pick up his signature mask, that I even realised this was the same creature I’d seen a few days before on Instagram.

In a surprise twist for the genre, we are immediately thrust into the killer’s perspective. After a group of teens stumble upon an abandoned fire tower and unknowingly steal his mother’s locket, our protagonist, Johnny, drags himself up from the forest floor. Silently skulking through green wilderness and lakeside cabins, he hunts each member of the group one by one in increasingly tortuous ways until he can finally get what is rightfully his.

The other difference from your usual horror fare is how quiet and distant everything feels as we embody Johnny. Nature foley replaces a traditional soundtrack, and we never stray too far away from his backside, the campers shot from a distance so that we never feel any closer to them. It’s only when Nash wants to showcase a bit of gory fun, and Johnny’s finished stalking his prey, that we get up all in those bloody details. This adds, for better or worse, a shockingly serene atmosphere to the whole production. It’s a form of minimalism that is by design – and budget constraints – calming. It forces you to connect with Johnny, creating an uneasy feeling when he finally commits horrendous acts of violence. However, by overindulging in this style of filmmaking (ninety percent of which is poorly edited walk cycles of an actor in a generic, tatty costume and cheap Halloween mask), In a Violent Nature fails to successfully scare, or really unnerve at all.

For instance, we can take a look at how the original Friday the 13th uses perspective to create a tense atmosphere. Similarly in the point of view of a killer, an unknown assailant lies in constant wait, stalking from a distance. Their deep and hissy breathing rattles the ears as they spy through cabin windows and across lakes at the local camp counsellors. The difference is, while we see through their eyes , we (almost) never see them. We don’t know this nameless killer, we hear stories from the counsellors of who they might be, but we’re never really sure until the very end. And we’re fearful because we’re in the killer's POV. We want to warn, scream or shout at the counsellors, but we can’t; the audience is powerless. An audience is always powerless, but here, watching Friday the 13th, they feel it.

That being said, it’s not always fair to compare contemporary works to the classics that inspired them, especially if they have a smaller team and less studio backing. So, let’s compare gore for gore and talk about the first Terrifier film. Both are low-budget films, both are from directors whose past works were shorts for an anthology feature, and both are distributed here in Australia by Umbrella and streaming on Shudder. While both films match-up in the kill and gore department and have midpoint kills that shrink the privates and churn the stomach, only Terrifier knows what to do with itself between kills. Art the Clown, and David Howard Thorton who plays him, are creepy, sadistic and menacing without even raising a finger. The clown mocks, stalks and plays with his prey; all with an exaggerated smile on his face. I didn’t care that the two main girls had stale dialogue and cardboard personalities, as soon as Art dragged his sack of tools into that burger shop, I was immediately tense. By contrast, Ryan Barret just doesn’t hold up as Johnny.

After sitting with the film for a while, I realise Johnny is less a gleeful killer and more a bear that’s been poked by naive tourists, however, it’s clear from the kills that Nash wanted the film to be scary and not just a simple subversion like Cabin in the Woods or Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. But by the film trying to have its cake and eat it too, it loses all sense of balance. Johnny kills too violently – and later on with a particularly unsettling kill, methodically – to be classified as a natural predator, and he doesn’t really embody an undead behemoth out for revenge. Instead, he feels more like an actor in prosthetics enjoying a casual walk through nature. It doesn’t help that without the mask, the natural lighting makes the costume look cheap. You can even see the seams of his disfigured face stand out in the harsh sunlight. If Nash had shortened the time between kills, had Barret embodied a similar stalking performance to the likes of Richard Brooker in Friday the 13th Part III or Kane Hodder in parts VII to X , or if the DOP had just gone for a first person angle like the original Friday the 13th, Violent Nature would, at the very least, be unsettling. And while the natural setting is a cool experiment in conventions and audience expectations, it’s Nash’s fear to commit to it completely that draws criticism from slasher die-hards like myself.

However, I would be remiss not to mention the one time when the whole ‘quiet and detached’ mood came together. In the third act, when final girl Kris escapes the forest with a branch piercing through her ankle, we finally lose sight of Johnny. Picked up by a local woman, we’re treated to a long monologue about a bear attack, but as the car careens down the road, much like Kris, we’re not paying attention to her allegory, we’re stressed about when Johnny’s going to come back for revenge. As Kris becomes faint from blood loss, her saviour stops the car to help bandage her up. Kris panics, imploring the woman to get back in the car and drive. Her eyes dart around. And as she stares into the wilderness, we soon find ourselves staring with her into a patch of forest, not quite sure if we can see something in the distance. It is at this moment where In a Violent Nature finally understands what it needs to be successful. Nash, rightly, gets us used to seeing Johnny, used to knowing where he is, and used to hearing the thud of his boots and rattling of his hooks, only to take him away at the most pivotal moment. This is where the fear of the film is most potent. The supposedly ‘empty’ frame that we see through Kris’ eyes captures what the Friday the 13th franchise mastered: a primal fear. If In a Violent Nature spent more time in that fear, it could have been great. After all, there is no greater fear than the fear of the unknown; a fear that something sees us, but we don’t see them. And unfortunately, it seems like Nash was more concerned with making Johnny a pretty looking monster for social media, and as a result, horror fans see right through him.