‘In a Violent Nature’ Does Something Horror Movies Never Do and Is Better For It

The following contains spoilers for In a Violent Nature.

Horror is home to some amazing musical scores. This comes as no surprise; music is a great tool to create tension and suspense, and those feelings are essential to the genre. Halloween was made better (and scarier) with music from John Carpenter himself, and Psycho’s string-heavy score has been an inspiration for slasher films and the horror genre in general. Both Halloween and Psycho have instantly recognizable and rather timeless music behind them that continues to be seen throughout the genre, and that alone is a testament to how impactful a horror film’s score can be. It sets the mood, tells a secondary part of the story, and fills the audience with a dread and tension they can’t shake, something that lies beneath dialogue and ambient noise, lurking.

While a score can truly elevate a horror film, it might be just as true that no score at all can create the same effect. 2024’s In a Violent Nature, the first feature-length film from director Chris Nash that just hit theaters, sets out to prove this point by being entirely scored by natural sound. There’s no music here that isn’t diegetic, and this approach makes the film that much better. It grounds it in nature — a central theme of the film — and uses the uncomfortable and unpredictable way of the natural world to create the fear and suspense that a musical score would.

In a Violent Nature

The horror movie tracks a ravenous zombie creature as it makes its way through a secluded forest.

Release Date

January 22, 2024

Director

Chris Nash

Cast

Lauren-Marie Taylor , Andrea Pavlovic , Ry Barrett , Reece Presley

Runtime

94 minutes

Why ‘In a Violent Nature’ Took a Natural Approach to Sound

In an interview with Dread Central, Nash mentions that his film drew a lot of inspiration from Friday the 13th, another classic film with a score that is highly regarded and deeply intertwined with the movie’s tone and story. We can see this inspiration, of course, in the setting and plot of In a Violent Nature. It takes place in the woods. A masked killer is on the loose terrorizing some college-aged kids that aren’t doing the right thing. The scene where Johnny (Ry Barrett) kills Brodie (Lea Rose Sebastianis) in the lake is definitely an homage to the series.

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Does Johnny get that locket?

However, Nash felt no need to follow in the film’s footsteps in terms of sound. In the same interview, he mentioned that he often feels that scores don’t always work collaboratively with the story and that the setting can be a character that you don’t want to mute with music. This was an interesting approach to take. So often, we hear about how a score elevates a movie. It is supposed to work with the setting, not against it. However, in the case of In a Violent Nature, where the outdoor setting is so integral to the plot, a score truly would have been a study in working against the main character. It would have made the film less suspenseful by silencing the sounds of nature, the very thing our victims are using as an escape and our killer as cover.

Nature Speaks in ‘In a Violent Nature’, and It Has a Lot to Say

This is ultimately why the lack of score makes the movie feel so tense, even when our killer is rather slow and spends a lot of time simply wandering through the woods. Not unlike nature itself, Johnny is rather unassuming. He’s hiding in plain sight at many points, even showing up in the background of the picture the friends take by the campfire, but no one seems to think anything of it until he appears before them. He’s slow to move but quick to act. He follows the sounds of the world around him, rustling leaves, snapping twigs, and chirping insects, and it provides him a place to hide and observe before he strikes.

Were there a score, there is a good chance that Johnny wouldn’t have felt so…scary. At some points in the film — particularly the first kill — Johnny feels kind of comedic. He silently walks like he has nowhere to be while his victim is running toward the woods and screaming in absolute terror. It takes place in broad daylight, which feels highly unusual for a slasher film, and we haven’t yet heard a sound to really give us that icky “something’s coming” feeling. Because Johnny doesn’t speak, the sounds of nature speak for him, in a way. When he steps on a stick and alerts his prey to his position, you know to start anticipating the chase and eventual kill. Normally, this would be an area where the score would kick in with a fast tempo and maybe percussion to simulate the sounds of pounding feet, and shrill strings to build that anxious, on-the-edge-of-your-seat feeling. In a Violent Nature, though, treats us to the actual sounds of the scene. Footsteps, heavy breathing, the crunch of stone, the sound of ripping flesh, screams — they are clear, not fighting with any music to be heard. It lets noise take the lead.

Nature is Terrifying, and ‘In a Violent Nature’ Knows It

It might seem strange to choose noise over music because, in day-to-day life, we do our best to escape the noise. Or, at least, we do our best to escape certain noises. In fact, it’s so often that people say they go camping or hiking to get away from the noise of a city and submerge themselves in the quiet, easy noises of nature. This is exactly what our victims in the film are doing. They’re going camping as an escape, unknowingly trapping themselves with an apex predator.

In general, nature is incredibly two-faced. It’s beautiful, full of plants and animals and wonder, a place that feels untouched by the issues of man. It provides solace and inspiration. It provides; resources, shelter, food, and water. However, nature is also a force. It’s powerful and unapologetic in the way it operates, bringing forth storms and disasters and housing dangerous plants and animals. Johnny is shown to have this kind of duality. Of course, he is our killer, on a mission to retrieve his mother’s locket, and he will not stop until everything in his way is eliminated. But there are moments where we see that maybe there is more to him than bloodthirst, such as when he sees a memory of his parents at the beginning of the film, or when he grabs the keys and plays with the toy car attached to them. Perhaps this is why Johnny is scary despite his slow and steady methods. He is a gentle soul scorned.

The other thing about nature, though, is that it plays tricks on people, especially when it comes to sound. In our heads, the natural world — especially a wooded area, like the one in the film — is rather quiet. We should be able to hear if there is a person nearby, shouldn’t we? We would hear footsteps, or talking, or something. But there are so many natural sounds that make human-esque noises. The sound of a twig snapping could be a human step…or it could be an animal. A scream could belong to a human…or it could be a cicada. Rustling leaves could be a human moving through…or the wind. Our minds will almost always jump to the most logical conclusion, which is “I’m in the woods! It’s nature!” And why shouldn’t that be the conclusion?

That’s what makes the sound design of In a Violent Nature so compelling. We, as the audience, know that Johnny is after the friend group. We see him hiding in the foliage, hearing his boot snap the twig and his hand move the tree branch, but the other characters aren’t. They are in the same thought process we might be in that situation — it’s the sounds of nature. There’s nothing to worry about. This helps create dread in the audience. Even though we can see it coming, we can also relate to that feeling of everything being fine. And that all comes from the lack of music beneath the scene that lets us hear the soothing natural sounds… until they become deadly.

In A Violent Nature is in theaters now.

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