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In a Violent Nature’s Unbearably Tense Ending Makes the Whole Film Worthwhile
The experimental horror film is at its best when it breaks format. Spoilers!
Vacationing teens have stumbled across a mysterious locket hanging from the wreckage of a fire-lookout tower and, in taking it, have unwittingly resurrected a hulking revenant named Johnny (Ry Barrett) who then menaces the group in the Ontario woods. But in centering an embodiment of impassive evil rather than his targets, In a Violent Nature could just as easily be taken as a comment on the gorehound side of the genre, separating itself from all that pesky character development and focusing only on its means of serving up carnage. There’s little suspense to the rest of the film by design, because there’s never any question of where Johnny is until the finale, when all that fear comes rushing back in the form of Kris’s animal desperation as she sits there, staring fixedly into the woods, ready to risk bleeding out if it means she can put more distance between herself and the last place she saw the nightmare figure that killed her friends.
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