VOD: In A Violent Nature (dir: Chris Nash, 2024)

"Did you really think this was gonna work?"
"What?"
"This whole thing that you're doing."
"I don't know. It's worth a try, isn't it?"

This notorious indie slasher/horror gets straight down to business with the removal of a cursed amulet from a derelict woodland fire lookout, which brings about the resurrection of masked killer Johnny, who goes after a group of campers.  The USP here is that the film largely follows this classic set-up through the point of view of the killer - imagine a camera literally following behind a Jason or a Michael Myers.   The film eschews a music soundtrack and uses lengthy and unusual shots for the genre (such as bird's-eye and extra long shots), which emphasise the isolation and immediacy of the lurking danger, together with the claustrophobic feel generated by Academy ratio.  Johnny's slow, steady trudging through the woods has a hypnotic menace (that some will find repetitively dull), observing the victims just out of their sight plays well, and a couple of the kills are realised spectacularly on-screen with unpleasant relish.  The film does tread a very fine line between being a 2024 homage to the masked-killer-in-the-woods story and an interesting experiment in re-presenting the classic slasher genre, with the latter just about winning.     .