In A Violent Nature Is God Of War If It Was A Slasher (2024)

In A Violent Nature is a different kind of slasher movie. Not necessarily a better kind, just different. Whereas most films in the “deranged dude kills a bunch of teens” genre are fast-paced and a little trashy (not derogatory), In A Violent Nature borrows the pace of slow cinema and an arthouse fixation on the natural world. Director Chris Nash brings something new to the slasher genre by pairing the two up.

That odd juxtaposition is the movie's hook, and was actually all that I had heard about the film prior to release. But, what surprised me when I actually saw it was how similar it felt to a lot of video games — particularly, Santa Monica Studios' God of War reboots.

Johnny, The God Of War

Video games often use a narrative technique that movies usually don't: ambient storytelling. When you play Final Fantasy 7 Remake, you may overhear all kinds of conversations as you move through the Sector 7 slums. In a game like BioShock, you may see events happening in the world around you as you explore. Other mediums have attempted this kind of storytelling — Sleep No More is a famous example of immersive theater, where the audience experiences the story at their own pace by exploring a five-story warehouse space — but video games are the medium that most frequently shapes narrative through careful staging of a world you're tasked with exploring.

God of War and its sequel, Ragnarok, are more reliant on this kind of storytelling than most games because it's kind of the only tool in their toolbelt. These games stick to a strict "no cuts" camera policy, which means that they can't use editing to tell their story. Everything is told in real-time as Kratos and/or Atreus trudge through the Nine Realms. Characters walk alongside them, gods appear in front of them, battles break out around them, but the camera is always on Kratos and Atreus.

In A Violent Nature Makes The Normal Cast Of Slasher Characters Into NPCs

Though you have no input in how a film concludes, In A Violent Nature uses a similar approach to tell its reverse slasher story. As Johnny, the protagonist and killer, trundles through scenes, the camera follows him in long tracking shots, hovering behind his back. We don't get the full story on the teens he's hunting, just tidbits. We're (almost) always with Johnny, which means that we only get the fragments of the "main" story that he's around to see and hear. The cast of characters that would be the focus of another film are functionally NPCs here, having unimportant conversations with no bearing on where the story is headed.

In one early standout scene, Johnny tromps up to a rural house where the owner is in the midst of a heated argument with a cop. As the fight progresses, both parties are too focused on each other to notice as Johnny walks along the property, through an open door, and into the empty house. As Johnny moves, we overhear the conversation — with voices growing louder and quieter as he gets nearer or farther — but Johnny isn't a part of it. The dialogue background noise in the same way it would be if you walked by two characters arguing along your path in a video game.

Movies, TV, and video games are all mediums that use the moving image to tell a story and, as a fan of them all, I'm always excited to see one intelligently take a cue from another. Games have been attempting to be cinematic since near their birth, but it feels like we're finally seeing a generation of filmmakers who grew up steeped in video game culture thoughtfully experimenting with applying the medium's strengths back to film. In A Violent Nature is one such experiment, and I hope Nash sets off a chain reaction.