In this week’s episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo roams the forest searching for his next victim while discussing “In A Violent Nature.” The movie follows a resurrected killer through the woods as he stalks his victims, all while searching for his stolen necklace. The film is written and directed by Chris Nash and stars Ry Barrett, Josh Lucas, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, and more. The indie horror has also become notorious recently for terrifying audiences and even making some pass out and vomit in early screenings.
During the interview, Chris Nash discusses not only the apparent homages to ’80s slashers like “Friday The 13th” but also the less-expected arthouse influences that just as heavily influenced the tone and approach to his first feature film.
“[When I was in college], Gus Van Sant had premiered ‘Gerry,’ and I just really took to that film and then subsequent movies, ‘Elephant’ and ‘Last Days.’ Just the breezy, casual style of that aesthetic really stuck with me,” Nash shared. “I kind of like slower films. I like films that take their time and don’t necessarily have to fill in all the blanks right away. And I feel like those films were just so unique and so kind of perfect in what they were. I feel like if you don’t like them, it’s not the movie you thought it was going to be because they’re just the films that they are. And I really appreciate them for that.”
Nash then had something of an epiphany: what if he could apply some of those ideas and concepts to genre movies of all stripes?
“I was wondering, growing up with more films, growing up being a huge horror fan, if that could even be applied to genre cinema,” he explained. “And you could go do a ghost story, do a monster movie, whatever. And I felt like a slasher just taking place in the woods and having that environment—that’s such an important and key role to like the slasher mythos, that would be kind of the perfect sandbox to like to play around in and see.”
That’s not to say that filming the buzzy slasher hit was smooth sailing. In fact, the film that’s currently terrifying audiences across the country was almost entirely reshot.
“It really depends on how I was feeling during the day. Sometimes I say 90% [of it was reshot]. It was definitely hovering around, I’d say, 75, 80%,” he admitted.
So, why reshoot an entire movie? How did that feel to go back as both a director and producer on the film? Nash was fully open as to what had occurred.
“I was second-guessing the vision I had and what would be the best way to tell this story,” he explained. “So, when we shot—we spent four weeks filming principal photography, which was supposed to be like our entire principal photography, but we had a lot of issues. We had a lot of weather issues, our lead actor fell ill and had to leave the production halfway through, and there was a multitude of things that should fall under ‘indie filmmaking woes,’ but it seemed to be much worse than that. So, everything didn’t feel right when we did an assembly edit of what we had shot. Just the tone felt off, and we couldn’t put our finger on it. There were some things where we were like, okay, the costume, honestly, just wasn’t iconic as we wanted it to be.”
The final result is a sparse, beautiful, and horrifically brutal new take on the slasher genre that feels less like a first entry and more like you’re dropped right into the middle of a thoroughly mythologized sequel, which, according to Nash, was the idea.
“The idea was we were kind of treating it like ‘what if Gus Van Sant directed a ‘Friday the 13th’ sequel?’ not necessarily [an origin story] because the slasher genre has so many entries into it. We realized that we can use slasher and genre shorthand—just use these tropes instead of using them as crutches and stuff, like exploiting them to be like, ‘Oh, we didn’t need to tell a giant backstory about anything.’ We didn’t need actually to know these characters. We need to know one aspect of these characters, and that’s because, honestly, I feel like in a lot of slashers, you’re only getting one dimension of the character.”
The film has been a hit with festival audiences, but only time will tell if we get a full-fledged sequel. Regardless, Nash has ideas.
“Yeah, he’s definitely going to space next,” Nash joked. “[“Other franchises would] be the sixth or seventh entry or tenth entry to be the space one— and no, number two, straight to space!”
The Playlist Presents – Chris Nash’s slasher/thriller Film recommendation Playlist:
1.) The entire “Friday the 13th” series (1980-2001)
2.) “Angst” (1983), directed by Gerald Kargl
3.) “No Country for Old Men” (2007), directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
4.) “The Burning” (1981), directed by Tony Maylam
5.) “Rituals” (1977), directed by Peter Carter
“In A Violent Nature” is in theaters on May 31st via IFC Films. You can listen to the full interview below.
