In a Violent Nature is a new type of slasher film, though its story might sound otherwise: Johnny was a boy who was abused and neglected. The only thing he cares about is a locket given to him by his beloved mother before she died. The locket hangs above his resting place in the woods like a gravestone. When the locket is stolen, Johnny wakes up and won’t rest until he finds it.

Pretty traditional, right? Wrong. In this interview with the film’s writer and director Chris Nash, we discuss all the ways he was trying to upend the traditional slasher film, from following the killer – rather than the victims – on his pursuit through the woods, to the gore, and the lack of score.

What inspired In a Violent Nature?

Right when I was going to film school, in the early 2000s, was when Gus Van Sant released his films Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days. They all have a very distinctive style to them, where we’re following a character through an environment, and I thought that was so compelling. There’s something very magnetic about it. I grew up with horror films, genre films, and was always a big fan, like snobbishly so. I wondered if there was a way to make a genre film using these conventions and aesthetics. I thought about it for a while, and I had this idea in the back of my head for quite a few years. Then I sat down and wrote it out.

Alyse Wax: The film seems to reinvent the traditional slasher genre.

Chris Nash: Yeah, very much. It’s not to reinvent the wheel, but to be a slasher film people have seen before, but haven’t seen it this way before. I didn’t want to throw any wrenches in the works, or make too many things subverting expectations. I wanted to follow an incredibly traditional slasher film plot structure. Right down to the characters, how they are very much prototypes and archetypes of different people. Just have the genre audience watch it and say, “I’ve seen this before … just not this way.”

This was your feature directorial debut. Can you talk about anything that was easier than expected, and anything that was harder than expected?

Nothing was easier than I expected! The only thing easier is probably these steps right here [the press junket]. I thought, personally, that doing any kind of interviews was going to be the thing I had the most issues with. This is just me, my personality, that I would put my foot in my mouth way too many times.

Everything was way more difficult than I expected. We thought it was going to be a really simple idea, just following a monster man walking through the woods. How hard is that, to set up a camera behind him and follow him? But every problem in the world reared its ugly head. During our first attempt at trying to shoot it, we had a camera system that was way too big. It took up a footprint that was like five feet wide and eight feet tall.

Then, to follow a monster through the woods, we had to carve out a trail for him to walk. It makes things look not as good because you don’t have any foreground elements like branches or anything coming close to the camera. So you feel less in the environment.

Then there were the simple things, like how far away are you from the monster? At our first attempt to shoot this, we found we were way, way too close. So we had to pull further back because we needed to be more objective to what is happening. We can’t feel like we are right there beside him; we have to feel like we are watching something happen.

You’re also entirely dependent on the weather. We shot in May in Northern Ontario, which is black-fly season. Then the second block we shot in August, which is very much mosquito season.

So it was just everything that I had never given any thought to made the whole thing more difficult.

There was a lack of a score in this film. Can you discuss why you went without one?

We wanted to be hyper-objective with the film. We wanted to show what was happening as much as we could; comment on it by not commenting on it. Score does all the emotional thinking for you. There have been too many times where I watched a film — especially after doing the sound design on this film — and there is a very emotional moment, and I wonder, “Is this actually emotional? Or is it just the song?” I can’t fault any filmmakers for doing that; some of my favorite moments in film are because of the symbiotic relationship between the music and the image I’m watching. But for this one, we really wanted to not influence what an audience is going to feel at all. The choice to not have a score was entirely because of that.

Was Johnny meant to be the hero of the story?

No, not at all. I know, he does have his moments of humanity — these brief, fleeting moments — but no, I really wanted to follow a character we had no empathy or sympathy for. The audience, when they are watching, doesn’t feel any attachment to, but is also slightly, perversely, attracted to what they are seeing, and doesn’t understand why they are motivated to keep watching it.

Interesting. Because we didn’t have any backstory or even character names for anyone else besides Johnny.

If I were to do this again, I wouldn’t have given the characters names, just descriptions of their archetypes: Asshole Boyfriend, or Hippie Girl… I would have definitely given them those credits. They are much more easily identifiable, too. But I do consider it more to be Chris, our final girl’s story. It’s just a lot of set up to get there. But I do consider her our main character.

How do you come up with the extreme kills you have going on in this film? There are some — the yoga girl, for one — that are really unique. And really bloody.

It’s not too hard. I think setting constraints for yourself is the way to make it easier. If you feel like you have every opportunity and every toy in the world to make a kill with, it’s almost harder. For that one, specifically, we were in this situation, we were on this location, and we had a set of hooks with a chain connecting them. So what do I do with that, that’s going to be very unique to the hooks? If he was carrying a machete, this scene would be entirely different. I’m playing and I’m leaning into what he has. Then you just let your mind flow with it. You create a bad situation, then you think, “How do I make this situation worse?” Until you get to the point where there’s no escaping this.

I have a background in prosthetic effects, too. So my head prosthetics guy, Steve Kostanski, we were just finding ways to entertain ourselves and challenge ourselves as effects artists.

Can you talk about the title and the change?

It was originally called Sleeping Animal, because I wanted to treat Johnny as if he was an animal in hibernation and part of the natural landscape that was disturbed. He is just going to go out and do his killing and go back to sleep. I thought that was an appropriate title.

When we were looking for funding for it, one of the distributors we were talking to told us we should have a different title, that that wasn’t a good title. My producers asked if I had any other titles, and I suggested In a Violent Nature, but I didn’t know — it felt a little too on-the-nose. But we like how it plays, like a double entendre: nature being violent but his axe also being violent.

In a Violent Nature unleashes in theaters on May 31.