st240

FEATURE MOVIE

Settle in and get comfy with these iconic horror villains this Halloween. Here’s what they’ll be eating... Top 5 Killer Snacks

Jason Voorhees Mum’s spaghetti

Michael Myers Nugs (in lieu of dogs and cats)

Leatherface Beef jerky (if human isn’t available)

Freddy Krueger

Pizza (with extra souls)

There's a new slasher movie and it's absolutely bonkers. It's called In a Violent Nature , and many agree that it's an essential watch for all horror fans. Words Glenn Cochrane

The Strangers: Dollface, Pin-up Girl and Man in the Mask A share bucket of chicken

T he movie earned a cult following before even arriving on Australian screens in

slashers – and it's the reason for the attention that it's receiving – is that it's all shown from the killer's perspective. In the moments when classic slashers spend time with the ensemble characters, we get to hang back with killer Johnny and see

expectations. It should fulfil expectations of questions like, 'I wonder what happens in the background'. And it's exactly what you think happens. He just walks from point A to point B,” he says while laughing. “You know, he needs to take a rest at times.” Of course, Nash is playing down the strength of his movie, and curious minds should know that In a Violent Nature lives up to its title and the kills are gnarly. It is, indeed, a splatter-fest, and there's no shortage of blood and gore on display... actually, that's not quite true, as we found out. “That ranger's death. That was supposed to go on for so much longer, but after the arm gets cut off we realised

August, and if you’re a mad genre fan then chances are that you’ve heard the buzz preceding it. We caught up with the movie's director, Chris Nash, who admits that he's been taken off guard by the attention that his movie has been getting. “I would not go as far as to say it has a cult following,” he says humbly, with amusement. “Appetites are very very forgetful within the genre community. But the reception has blown us all away. This was such a small movie that we shot in my hometown. I mean, we expected it to go to streaming and maybe hit a few genre festivals, find an underground audience, and be a word-of-mouth thing. “So, getting into the Sundance Film Festival and getting a theatrical release across the globe is something we would have never thought.” Described as an ambient slasher movie, the story adheres to the classic tropes of the genre, and is obviously modelled after the Friday the 13th franchise. The plot Director Chris Nash

that we were running out of blood,” he says with gleeful amusement. The movie is marked with

what these bogeymen get up to between kills. It's very amusing and refreshing to see a Jason Voorhees type of monster with time on his hands, idly waiting for the next person to come along. “The late 2000s is when I first had the idea of approaching a genre movie using this aesthetic. But I

incredible death scenes, which gorehounds will lap up. And we should add that it's all in good fun, and within the spirit of iconic horror.

• In a Violent Nature is out Oct 23

Nash never takes his movie too seriously, and relishes the gratuitousness with pride. “I really like the final kill,” he says of all of the gory moments throughout the film. “It's the axe kill that goes on for way too long. It's just an axe to the face over and over again until it becomes funny. It comes across way gooier than I thought it would, and it's just really fun and really sloppy, and it's angry. It's a moment in time when we just see Johnny angry.”

is straightforward - a killer, resurrected by a group of young people staying in a nearby cabin, wanders through a forest, moving from one kill to the next. Where it differs from other

just kind of sat on it and threw it on my pile of ideas,” Nash says, explaining when the idea of a transgressive take on slashers occurred to him. “We were trying very hard to avoid

DYK?

The cult director of Father’s Day , The Void,

and Psycho Goreman , Steve Kostanski, was the prosthetic makeup artist on In a Violent Nature .

subversion. We wanted people to know that this is not going to defy

27