Sundance has given the world some pretty good disturbing horror films in the past. Movies like Watcher, Talk to Me, and Speak No Evil. At this year’s event, there was one that apparently is going to join the ranks called In a Violent Nature.
Let’s start with the synopsis taken from IMDb, “The horror movie tracks a ravenous zombie creature as it makes its way through a secluded forest.” Sound familiar? Some critics think so.
Collider made a headline for their film review that said Jason Voorhees should “eat his heart out.”
They add: “The festival’s most explosive horror film takes familiar slasher elements, tears them to pieces, and makes a macabre work of gory art in the wreckage.”
The movie borrows a lot from Sean S. Cunningham’s original Friday the 13th, even going so far as to incorporate plot points from some of its sequels, including Part 6, when the hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees is resurrected from his grave by lightening to continue his swath of destruction on nubile immoral teens. In a Violent Nature also has its own lone killer named Johnny, played by Toronto-based actor Ry Barrett.
So is In a Violent Nature an homage to Friday the 13th, or a loving rip-off? According to Collider’s Chase Hutchinson, maybe a bit of both since the film incorporates many of the tropes that were used in ’80s slasher films such as My Bloody Valentine, Halloween, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
But that doesn’t matter because every fan of a good slasher movie, however derivative, rank them higher if the kills are good. Hutchinson implies you won’t have to worry about that part of the storytelling.
“The kills in this film are some of the most bonkers, bloody, and brutal you’ll ever see,” he writes. “It’s the type of film where you’ll go ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a decapitated head do that before’ in both awe and terror.”
All of the gore might just seem like overkill in the same way Adam Green’s Hatchet movies were. But Hutchinson says director Chris Nash’s technique is a positive addition.
“Nash knows when to be bombastic and when to balance it with a lighter touch, ensuring each cuts deeper. It is grimly funny at times, though no less terrifying because of it.”
There is no news about when In a Violent Nature will be released, but it is a Shudder exclusive so expect to see it on that service soon.