IN A VIOLENT NATURE (2024)
The brief: make an old-school slasher film of the “hulking killer lays waste to young people in the woods” variety, only make it while adhering to the formal restrictions of arthouse cinema (specifically, the long, stately, scrupulously composed shots of "slow cinema"). ("Who asked for this," one could rightly wonder, but given the rise of "elevated horror" as a bankable genre category such a combination was always coming, and it may be better to think of this as an inevitable product of market permutations rather than of a Five Obstructions-style exercise in aesthetic constraint. That's not necessarily a criticism.)
But anyway: how is it as a viewing experience? Well, I spent a fair portion of the runtime wondering if this was going to fall into the "more interesting to think about than to watch" category, but ultimately I think it justifies its existence. It does prove that this form and this content are compatible—the long takes following Johnny's lumberings genuinely do reinforce the sense that we're watching an unstoppable embodiment of rage. And I'll give it points for the fact that, for the most part, the highfalutin trappings don't dilute the visceral pleasures of this kind of genre—in other words, it racks up its share of imaginative and memorable kills. In fact, the kill with the most measured pace is also arguably the most affecting, giving us an awful "can't look away" feeling. With that said, the available "elevations" at hand don't extend to actually solving the common problems of this kind of genre (flat characterization, repetitive construction). That wasn't the brief, really, so we can let it go, but it's hard not to see places where this film could have benefitted from being a little more clever.
jbushnell
