The Most Overlooked Horror Movie of 2024 Has A Valuable Lesson For Us All
“What if a slasher was from the point-of-view from the murderer?” is far more interesting than it sounds.
Over the weekend, Variety inadvertently tripped over a nest of bloodsucking hornets when it published an article calling Sinner’s explosive box office debut into question. The gist of the article was that, despite its record-breaking opening weekend, Sinners was still a financial liability thanks to director Ryan Coogler’s unique ownership agreement with the studio. The internet’s collective response was that movies with similar contracts made by white directors never face the same level of scrutiny.
We’ll probably all forget about this entire controversy by next week, while Sinners is clearly destined to become a modern horror classic. But the larger point that all this breathless box office coverage seems to raise is that, as a society, we’ve never been more obsessed with the profitability of movies — and less concerned about making actual good cinema. All that said, if those numbers matter as much as Variety and co. seem to think, then Hollywood could learn a valuable lesson from one of the most successful (and most overlooked) original films of 2024.
In a Violent Nature premiered at Sundance 2024 before making a quiet theatrical debut last May to the tune of $4.6 million in ticket sales (on a budget of under $500,000). It then landed on the horror-focused streaming service Shudder, and now, In a Violent Nature is streaming on Hulu, meaning it’s finally time to give the most innovative scary movie of 2024 a watch.
Let’s make one thing clear: In a Violent Nature is definitely not for everybody. This unrated slasher masterpiece assumes its audience has a deep familiarity with genre staples like Friday the 13th and Halloween. It also assumes your tolerance for gore is extremely high — if the phrase “human pretzel” in the context of a horror movie doesn’t excite you, maybe sit this one out.
The thing that sets Violent Nature apart from the classics that inspired it, however, is writer/director Chris Nash’s unique spin on the genre. His movie tells its story from the perspective of its unstoppable mute murderer, which means large chunks of the film involve watching “Johnny” (Ry Barrett) slowly lumbering through the woods towards his next victim while the camera follows close behind. There’s no music either, just the sound of plants and branches crunching under his heavy boots, which gives Violent Nature an unexpected ASMR-like experience.
“Music can be such a crutch,” Nash said in an interview with TIME. “It's so immediately emotionally evocative. I didn't want to tell the audience what to think or what to feel while watching this. I wanted to create as much of an objective viewpoint as possible.”
The mute murderer of In A Violent Nature becomes the POV of the film, making it a truly unique slasher.
If you’re wondering about the plot, well, keep wondering. In a Violent Nature does technically have a story to tell, even if it’s a fairly unoriginal one, but the movie is much more interested in vibes than storytelling. Suffice it to say that the film introduces a group of teenagers who exist to run away from (and be brutally murdered by) Johnny in a variety of increasingly creative ways.
When the film tries to dump exposition on us, it mostly just slows down the momentum. Those rare, lore-focused scenes feel unnecessary, like Nash is second-guessing his unique vision in case his audience has never seen a slasher before and demands to know why Johnny is so angry. Thankfully, they’re rare enough that they don’t get in the way of what In a Violent Nature does best: gore, murder, and some surprisingly chill scenes in between.
Movies like In a Violent Nature aren’t going to solve Hollywood’s bigger problems. After all, a micro-budget slasher might make a tidy profit, but it’s never going to keep hundreds of crew members employed. Then again, there’s still plenty of room for movies like this, and in an era where we’ve all become increasingly obsessed with box office figures, it’s nice to be able to point to a clear bright spot that didn’t need an A-list star or recognizable IP to find success.
