Rent In a Violent Nature (2024)

A letdown towards the end - In a Violent Nature review by KM

I enjoyed this as a modern day slasher until the last part and ending which was a letdown and anticlimax.

Teeth-grindingly dull, boring & not in any way scary, despite the potential - In a Violent Nature review by Timmy B

Horror is enjoying a resurgence in film & TV media. But whilst a number of recent movies are enjoying a new found audience & acclaim, there will be many more which fall into the familiar trap of either being boring and/or filled with characters you either hate or have no interest in at all, meaning the ratcheting-up of tension totally falls flat. In a Violent Nature manages to do both, in a film riddled with clichés which I switched off after an hour.

A group of spoilt, annoying brats on spring break from college, staying in the Canadian wilderness, walk through a graveyard & steal a gold pendant which is keeping a demonic creature at bay. Said creature then awakes, determined to track down & reclaim this pendant, slaughtering whoever gets in his way.

For me, it is difficult to effectively communicate just how boring & dull this film is. One thing which is clear is that writer/director Chris Nash is either obsessed with Terrance Malik or fancies himself as the horror version of him. The dense forests and wilderness is practically another character, the camera straying slightly behind the monster as it stalks through the trees. There are also many times when the creature will stop & take stock of the surroundings, trying to ratchet up the tension... which totally fails.

Interestingly enough, this approach of melding nature with horror has been done fairly recently, by Lars Von Trier in Antichrist. However where Von Trier, along with cinematographer Anthony Dodd-Mantle, made what most people would think of as a beautiful piece of nature into an oppressive hellhole, Nash simply shoots everything like someone with a smartphone.

The collection of college-age characters are equally repugnant & annoying. Listening to them, complete with modern-day gripes (there is a debate about cancel culture with all the nuance of a testosterone-filled Tiktok influencer,) is the cinematic equivalent of toothache. But, this doesn't even have the desired effect of making you hate these people so much you are glad they are picked off in increasingly gory ways. You simply don't care.

Whilst a couple of the kills are inventive & gruesome (one character's death having a squelch & splatter which harkens back to the 80's horror this film so clearly wants to ape,) that was the only memorable thing in the hour or so I watched before switching off, and definitely not enough to sustain the protracted & painfully slow pace.