Get the latest gossip
‘In a Violent Nature’ Review: A Fresh Canadian Spin on Slasher Conventions
Chris Nash’s gory debut feature subjects the usual nubile youth to the usual cabin-in-the-woods horror — but with a distinctive shift in perspective.
There is explanatory backstory — however piecemeal and possibly-inaccurate — but otherwise writer-director Chris Nash ’s first feature approaches the usual bloody business with a sort of minimalist purity, enabled by focusing almost wholly on the POV of one Unstoppable Killing Machine. One of them (Sam Roulston as Ehren) tells the local legend of the “White Pine Massacre,” which involved lumberjacks several years prior picking on the “mentally hindered” son of a store owner. Using an almost square aspect ratio, DP Pierce Derks makes the northern Ontario wilderness locations both lovely and sinister, with enough variety to the visual tactics that the film never gets stuck in found footage horror’s first-person-camera stylistic rut.
Or read this on Variety