In a Violent Nature review — are we still watching these slasher movies?

Seriously? Are we still here? Still watching slasher movies, like this new Canadian entry, where a lumbering, hulking, facially deformed man of subnormal intelligence slowly stalks a brattish gang of pleasure-seeking youths and gorily dispatches them with extreme prejudice, one by screaming, splattering, one? Apparently so. The hook, this time, is that debut feature director Chris Nash uses some formal arthouse devices to reframe the horror movie antics we’ve repeatedly witnessed in the killing sprees of Freddy Krueger (from A Nightmare on Elm Street), Michael Myers (Halloween) and Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th).

This masked maniac, for instance, is a former “slow kid” called Johnny (Ry Barrett) who wears a vintage firefighter’s mask and terrorises campers in the woods of Ontario with an array of hooks, saws and axes. He is shot, however, mostly from just behind, with a careful camera set-up favoured by Belgian award winners the Dardenne brothers (Rosetta) and Hungarian auteur Laszlo Nemes (Son of Saul). The film frames are often rigorously composed, sometime static, and without any obtrusive musical score. So, yes. Round of applause.