Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Spoilers follow forIn a Violent Nature, in theaters now.
A great kill scene in a slasher movie inspires more than shock, terror, or disgust.
It gets you high on the sheeraudacityof the violence.
Winces crack into laughter.
Clapping greets the electric current of stunned disbelief that passes through the audience.
The scene in question is already notorious, its reputation precedingNatures theatrical release this week.
At arecent late-night festival screening in Chicago, people reacted to it like theme-park guests on a roller coaster.
(The squeamish and spoilerphobic alike should take this as warning to click away now.)
Cornered, the young woman screams and backs away but finds herself facing a steep bluff.
Is this depraved spectacle over?
Hes effectively perverted her exercise routine, stretching her into a nightmarish yoga pose of death.
As far as slasher fatalities go, its an all-timer.
But the scene also confirms the kind of movieIn a Violent Naturereally is.
The result is closer in style and rhythm to the doomy slow-cinema dirges of Gus Van Sant, likeElephantorGerry.
But theres nothing so philosophical going on in this movie.
Nash subverts the form of the slasher movie but not the content.
From a plot perspective, there are no big twists.
Mostly, they delay the familiar genre-buff dopamine hit of limb-chopping action.
Are actual characters necessary?
In taking inspiration from the art house, Nash refines or at least eccentrically differentiates his grind-house material.
And that goes for his already-historic, Grand Guignol kill with a view, too.
