Metacritic reviews

For In a Violent Nature, careful calibration of chills just feels like second nature.

It is grimly funny at times, though no less terrifying because of it. Everything compliments itself as we observe the beautiful forest being made into a hunting ground where there is nowhere you are safe for long.

In a Violent Nature is a clever slasher experiment that underdelivers in the story department but more than makes up for it with some clever kills that will be sure to linger long after the credits roll.

If you love slashers, and love the language of slashers, it’s inevitable that the charms of In a Violent Nature will reach you. Eventually.

If there's any true criticism to be found with In A Violent Nature, it's that the "Friday the 13th" and "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" video games exist, diluting the inventiveness of the first-person perspective a little bit. But for those who've never played those games, In A Violent Nature will feel wholly unique. Fortunately, even if you have played these games, the film is still a hell of a lot of fun.

For horror fans, it’s a rare treat and a fantastic exercise in taking a genre in the opposite direction that everyone else has tried.

Its stripped-down approach to a familiar gist has a distinctiveness that is impressive, and is sure to please fans who are always up for a new slasher film — but wish most of them weren’t so interchangeable.

Writer and director Chris Nash's In A Violent Nature may be the first slasher in a long time to truly deconstruct the genre in a way that feels surprising, even if the results of its experiment are mixed.

This isn’t quite a nuanced study in violence, despite its title. Shot in northern rural Ontario, Canada in a generic backwoods called White Pines, the film ultimately feels hollow despite the deliberate cinematography by Pierce Derks.

It’s a breathless ending, but the juice hardly feels worth the squeeze by the dying minutes of a noble failure that trims all of the trappings off of the slasher genre until there’s nothing left but a monster, an old mask, and — in Nash — a seriously promising talent who could use a little bit more to work with next time.