In a Violent Nature (2024) Movie Review and Film Summary

In a Violent Nature is Directed by Chris Nash

Review: In a Violent Nature didn’t blow me away, but it’s creative enough to have me intrigued with where Chris Nash will set his sights next. The movie is made specifically for the hardcore sickos out there that love to see how far a creative can go to make an audience feel queasy.

In a Violent Nature (2024), directed by Chris Nash

In a Violent Nature Movie Review

No genre evolves and morphs like the horror genre. Long before the craze for “elevated horror,” slashers and creature features captured the minds and fears of audiences. There’s constantly new visionaries and ideas bubbling under the surface, and a movie like In a Violent Nature perfectly encapsulates the long tradition of redefining what a horror movie can look and feel like.

The film has many of the common, worn-through tropes if a slasher, to a point where the central figure could be mistaken as a Jason Voorhees copycat from the onset. We follow this figure from landmark to landmark, point to point, bludgeoning and disfiguring people to death at an alarmingly gruesome rate.

I won’t make the direct comparisons to Terrence Malick and other top-tier visionaries in the industries that other critics have, but I’ll note that director Chris Nash‘s In a Violent Nature is visually and stylistically undeniable, and that the movie has an interest in technical brilliance that you rarely see from low-budget horror movies – and slashers in particular.

This undead monster is woken up when a group of teen campers claim a locket from a collapsed tower that entombed this rotten corpse. Thus begins a 94-minute journey through a lush forest that includes a few of the gnarliest murders I have ever seen in a movie.

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, Chris Nash puts together a dagger that is inventive and gross in equal measures. The dread seeps through the screen as the antagonist makes his way through the campgrounds, wandering to his next victim in real time.

Your mileage may vary for In a Violent Nature depending on your ability to stomach its material. The movie is made specifically for the hardcore sickos out there that love to see how far a creative can go to make an audience feel queasy. I’d imagine there were some walkouts in theaters for those that weren’t sure what they were getting into.

The story can feel rather light or nonexistent as this really is a genre play and experiment in craft. Chris Nash will surely put together movies in the feature with a tighter narrative, but I hope he doesn’t lose this nasty side that the horror genre could use more of.

It was also refreshing to see a movie like In a Violent Nature that doesn’t use trauma as a plot engine like a good majority of contemporary horror does. The narrative here is specific and unique, straying away from current studio horror motifs.

In a Violent Nature didn’t blow me away, but it’s creative enough to have me intrigued with where Chris Nash will set his sights next. I wish I could’ve caught it in a theater because I’d imagine it would’ve made for an even wilder ride.