Imagine the Dardenne brothers got very high one night on some primo hash, then directed a slasher flick. That may be the best way to describe In a Violent Nature , and yes, we admit that this review has already drawn battle lines: You can sense jump-scare purists scoffing, arthouse habitues recoiling, and anyone who falls within the center of that Venn diagram [ raises hand ] salivating. That middle ground is indeed the sweet spot of writer-director Chris Nash’s feature debut, which adopts a calming, oddly meditative aesthetic before making extremely good on the promise of its title.
In a perfect world, this sick, unsettling addition to the cabin-in-the-woods film canon would unite both camps, each of whom would view its exotic elements as gateway drugs. Suddenly, gorehounds would be digging Rosetta en masse, and moviegoers unfamiliar with vintage grindhouse fodder would be dying to see more heads pulled pretzel-like through punctured abdomens. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
It starts, as so many great, grisly excursions into the underbelly of cinema do, with dumbass youngsters and a curse. Traipsing around in a forest, two guys come across a graveyard. One of them pockets a locket he finds hanging on a stick.
Seconds after they walk off, someone, or perhaps some thing, rises from beneath the earth. Courtesy of a clever riff on the ol’ campfire ghost-story chestnut — and an extremely clunky bit of magic-mirror flashback exposition — we eventually find out tha.