Interview With "In A Violent Nature" Director/Writer Chris Nash

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[00:01:02] We took it all.

[00:01:09] We brought them to this night, amber hot and icy cold, the rage of the earth.

[00:01:19] We made this curse.

[00:01:20] Carved it in the blood on our backs.

[00:01:24] We did not see.

[00:01:26] We could not, but she did.

[00:01:27] And in the end...

[00:01:28] What will I become?

[00:01:29] Senua's Saga, Hellblade 2.

[00:01:34] Play it now with Game Pass.

[00:01:36] You are listening to the Next Best Picture podcast, and this is Cody Derricks' interview

[00:01:41] with the writer and director for In a Violent Nature, Chris Nash.

[00:01:46] Hello, this is Cody Derricks with Next Best Picture, and I am so excited to be talking

[00:02:17] with the writer, director of the new horror movie, In a Violent Nature, Chris Nash.

[00:02:22] Chris, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:02:24] Not at all.

[00:02:25] Thank you.

[00:02:26] Of course.

[00:02:27] You know, as a huge horror fan, this movie just blew me away.

[00:02:31] I love the new angle you found on the well-worn but well-loved slasher genre.

[00:02:38] And one of the things that people are already latching onto about this film is the totally

[00:02:42] original kills.

[00:02:45] My audience at the Chicago Critics Fest had an insanely vocal reaction to one kill in

[00:02:49] particular that went viral.

[00:02:51] I'm sure you probably saw it.

[00:02:53] Did you specifically set out when making this movie to show things that we've never seen

[00:02:57] before in a horror film?

[00:02:59] Yeah, definitely.

[00:03:00] I have a background in prosthetics and special effects prosthetics as well.

[00:03:05] My prosthetics lead on the film, Stephen Kostansky, is a director as well.

[00:03:11] And so we always kind of have back and forths and, you know, having worked together on various

[00:03:16] projects and various television shows and stuff.

[00:03:20] It does become pretty boring, just even from a technical standpoint of like, okay, we're

[00:03:24] building another throat slash gag.

[00:03:26] Oh, we're building another stabbing gag.

[00:03:28] Oh, we're doing this, we're doing that.

[00:03:31] And so we definitely always try to like find things that, you know, we haven't necessarily

[00:03:36] seen before, just for the enjoyment of, you know, watching something that we haven't seen

[00:03:41] before, but also the challenge of building it, like figuring out how we're going to actually

[00:03:46] achieve a certain effect or kill or gag or anything like that.

[00:03:51] You know, I'm glad you brought up your special effects work because I was going to ask, is

[00:03:54] there any type of effect that you have a special fondness for?

[00:03:58] I love just like cable controlled puppets.

[00:04:01] Okay, yeah.

[00:04:03] Yeah.

[00:04:04] Classy.

[00:04:05] Yeah, they're just, they're never all that smooth.

[00:04:07] They're always a little wonky.

[00:04:08] They're always a little stiff and robotic, but they're a lot of fun.

[00:04:12] I like those a lot.

[00:04:14] You know, I'll take those any day over just a collection of ones and zeros pretending

[00:04:17] to be real.

[00:04:18] So I'm right there with you.

[00:04:21] Now besides the gnarly kill scenes, In a Violent Nature is really unique in that it's

[00:04:26] a slash movie that mostly follows the killer rather than the victims.

[00:04:30] What inspired you to make a horror film from this new perspective?

[00:04:34] The big inspiration that I had was in my more like formative film school years, watching

[00:04:40] Gus Van Zandt's Jerry and then following that up with Elephant and Last Days.

[00:04:45] And his aesthetic and how he treated the characters and the camera in those films, I thought was

[00:04:51] so interesting and so captivating.

[00:04:55] Just growing up with horror, growing up with genre films, growing up doing special effects.

[00:04:59] So I always wondered what would be the way to approach genre cinema in a much more stylistic

[00:05:08] convention and his objectivist approach specifically.

[00:05:13] And just going through thinking like, okay, what kind of movie would be the best for this?

[00:05:18] I just ended up on a slasher because especially like a slasher in the woods, rather than like

[00:05:23] a big city slasher, being able to incorporate all the atmosphere and all the environments

[00:05:28] of nature and imbue our character with that.

[00:05:31] It's a special effect in its own right, except it's a lot more affordable.

[00:05:35] So Johnny won't be taking Manhattan anytime soon.

[00:05:38] Johnny's going right to space next.

[00:05:41] This is what...

[00:05:42] Johnny X, got it.

[00:05:44] Yeah.

[00:05:45] Yeah.

[00:05:46] Now speaking to that objectivist perspective, something I was really taken by about your

[00:05:49] film was the kind of, to use some big terms, dichotomy of the patient style of filming

[00:05:56] with these pieces of dialogue that are from the would-be victims kind of yanked right

[00:06:02] out of these classic delightfully cheesy slasher movies from the 80s that this film

[00:06:06] is clearly in conversation with.

[00:06:08] Can you talk a little bit about this tonal differentiation and what you intend audiences

[00:06:12] to take from it?

[00:06:14] When we first approached this, me and my producing partners, Peter Kaplewski and Shannon Hanmer,

[00:06:19] we always felt like, okay, we have to treat this as if it is a slasher movie from the

[00:06:24] 80s in every way.

[00:06:26] Like the dialogue has to replicate that.

[00:06:29] Then they have to act like all the other characters have to act as if they're in like an 80s slasher.

[00:06:35] We had all these rules set out of how we were going to approach Johnny, how we wanted the

[00:06:39] characters to act.

[00:06:41] We just tried to stick with those rules.

[00:06:43] I think that there is definitely a tonal shift.

[00:06:47] Maybe in the experiment of how all this sorts itself out, that's the one thing that I think,

[00:06:52] ah, maybe that doesn't work exactly as I would have hoped it would.

[00:06:56] Because I do feel like the ... I think our actors are amazing.

[00:07:02] I probably could have wrote something a little less corny for a lot of stuff.

[00:07:09] Even though I was trying to ape that style, I think because of the hyper serious tone

[00:07:15] of everything else, it feels a little too jarring.

[00:07:18] But yeah.

[00:07:19] Well, you know, it's interesting because it definitely is jarring, but it's something

[00:07:24] that I kind of appreciated about it because to say what I got out of your film from this

[00:07:29] angle, to me it kind of felt like the audience is in on a secret that the characters aren't

[00:07:35] aware of, or at least the victim characters.

[00:07:37] They think they're in a movie that isn't in a violent nature, that isn't capable of these

[00:07:42] kinds of atrocities and this kind of real world gore, for lack of a better word.

[00:07:46] So to me, the dichotomy worked and the tonal clashing kind of came together to indicate

[00:07:52] something.

[00:07:53] I wasn't even really quite sure how to put a term to it, but it sparked something in

[00:07:56] me.

[00:07:57] I'll stand up for your movie a little bit for you.

[00:07:59] Okay, and I'll steal that answer.

[00:08:01] Okay, great.

[00:08:02] I give it to you.

[00:08:03] Perfect.

[00:08:04] Now, you know, you mentioned this, there is a hard tonal kind of differentiation, especially

[00:08:10] in around the third act, not to give anything away, but one really important piece of that

[00:08:15] shift is a character played by Lauren Marie Taylor, who only pops up at the very end.

[00:08:21] Bay Jason Voorhees fans may recognize her from her role in Friday the 13th Part 2.

[00:08:25] Now, was this an intentional piece of casting on your part or was this kind of just a happy

[00:08:30] accident?

[00:08:31] We took it all.

[00:08:34] We brought them to our land.

[00:08:37] An endless night, ember hot and icy cold.

[00:08:42] The rage of the earth.

[00:08:44] We made this curse.

[00:08:45] Carved it in the blood on our backs.

[00:08:50] We did not see.

[00:08:51] We could not, but she did.

[00:08:52] And in the end...

[00:08:53] What will I do?

[00:08:54] In the end, what will I become?

[00:08:56] Senua's Saga.

[00:08:57] Hellblade 2.

[00:08:58] Play it now with Game Pass.

[00:09:01] It was very intentional for that character especially.

[00:09:07] We wanted to bring somebody from the Friday franchise into that role, but we didn't want

[00:09:12] it to be so immediately recognizable for everybody.

[00:09:15] There would be a huge shattering of the fourth wall if a final girl, Chris, met up with somebody

[00:09:25] and it was Kane Hodder.

[00:09:28] It would have been beyond just the fact that as much as I have faith that Kane Hodder can

[00:09:36] play an incredibly compassionate role, he's a big, gruff, hulking guy.

[00:09:42] And it would have just brought so much threat to that situation that wasn't necessarily

[00:09:49] intended.

[00:09:50] But it would also have caused a stir of whispers within a genre audience familiar with who

[00:09:56] Kane is.

[00:09:57] So we were hoping for something that was more for casual fans and more for people who aren't

[00:10:04] fans at all to perhaps look at after and go, oh, she was in Friday the 13th Part 2.

[00:10:11] That's interesting.

[00:10:12] That must have been purposeful.

[00:10:14] Right, and not even the final girl.

[00:10:16] So it's not...

[00:10:17] Yeah.

[00:10:18] It's not a huge...

[00:10:19] Corey Feldman is not popping up anywhere in Violent Each.

[00:10:22] Not to spoil, but...

[00:10:25] He'll be in space for the second.

[00:10:28] I have to ask, another part of this movie is a lot of patient scenes with the camera

[00:10:33] kind of right behind the killer walking.

[00:10:37] How much footage of walking do you have?

[00:10:40] So much.

[00:10:41] Yeah.

[00:10:43] We've got, I think for every five seconds of walking that we have on the screen, we've

[00:10:49] got at least...

[00:10:50] It was five seconds pulled off of at least a one to two minute sequence of just walking

[00:10:57] through woods and stuff like that.

[00:11:00] We found in the edit that we really wanted to have the shots of walking be long enough

[00:11:07] that we do feel the environment and also feel Johnny in the environment, but not go on forever.

[00:11:17] There's one shot, one walking shot that does go on for quite a bit longer than everything

[00:11:21] else, but we kind of took that as like a palette cleanser that occurs right after what is probably

[00:11:26] our biggest gag.

[00:11:27] It was an interesting discovery of finding out how much do we need to show before the

[00:11:34] environment becomes like seeps into the entire picture of this shot of walking so we can

[00:11:41] cut away from it.

[00:11:42] But there's so much walking, so, so much walking, Cody.

[00:11:46] You all got your steps in, I'm sure.

[00:11:48] Everybody got their steps in, yeah.

[00:11:50] Now again, to bring it back to the kills, I have to.

[00:11:53] How were the actors when they were told what they'd be doing and how it would be happening?

[00:11:57] Were they excited to be going about this process?

[00:12:00] I think everybody was very interested.

[00:12:02] I think for quite a few of them, it was their first time being involved in the process at

[00:12:07] all as far as getting like their head cast or for some actors such as Charlotte Regan,

[00:12:14] she had her entire body cast.

[00:12:17] So I think it was interesting for them.

[00:12:19] I don't know the psychological effect that it has on somebody watching themselves get

[00:12:25] like murdered on screen.

[00:12:27] It's one of these things I never thought about, but it's definitely up for conversation.

[00:12:33] With my actors.

[00:12:34] Yeah, because it was something that Shannon Hanmer, my producing partner, actually pointed

[00:12:40] out at the premiere, making it known to our actors like this could be a little weird for

[00:12:44] you.

[00:12:45] You know, you obviously know how the sausage is made, but just be prepared for it to be

[00:12:49] a little weird seeing yourself die.

[00:12:52] Especially if the audience is clapping afterwards.

[00:12:54] Cheering for it.

[00:12:55] Yeah, exactly.

[00:12:56] I was reading about your filming process and I learned that you changed up locations after

[00:13:02] you already started filming.

[00:13:03] What wasn't exactly working about the first place and how much did you actually get to

[00:13:07] film in that area that you didn't have to didn't get to use?

[00:13:10] We shot for roughly four weeks.

[00:13:15] It was going to be like all of our principal photography.

[00:13:17] So we shot roughly 75 to 80% of the film at another location.

[00:13:23] And we shot that all in the fall.

[00:13:25] And when we looked at the assembly cut of it, there were many things that happened during

[00:13:31] production that made us feel uncertain of what we got in our footage.

[00:13:37] It became clear that the character of the forest itself needed to be a little more distinct.

[00:13:43] And when I had envisioned, especially with the mythology of Johnny being like having this

[00:13:47] history within like the logging industry where we'd originally shot, there wasn't a lot of

[00:13:52] like towering pines or anything.

[00:13:54] It was it was oaks.

[00:13:56] It was cedars.

[00:13:57] It was all looked beautiful, but just didn't have the same character that we were hoping for.

[00:14:04] So when we ended up essentially reshooting everything of what we had, it was a very conscious

[00:14:09] point to find the right locations and find the right trees.

[00:14:13] Because when you're thinking of this idea in your head and when you're writing it out

[00:14:17] and you think, oh, this is going to be easy.

[00:14:19] We just have to follow a character through the woods.

[00:14:21] That's it.

[00:14:22] You don't realize at that point in time that the woods is playing such an important role

[00:14:26] that you had that every shot has to be accounted for as far as like is the are these trees

[00:14:31] interesting to look at?

[00:14:33] Yeah, it was a it was a very important decision to find a new location and find a new environment

[00:14:39] to shoot in.

[00:14:40] Unfortunately, I'm approaching the end of my time here with you, Chris.

[00:14:43] But before I let you go, I want to really quickly ask.

[00:14:45] It's impossible to talk about this film without bringing up Friday the 13th.

[00:14:49] What's your favorite film in the series?

[00:14:52] Part five, followed by Jason X.

[00:14:55] Yeah, just bring on the hate.

[00:14:57] I don't mind it.

[00:15:01] I just think part five is such a weird hangout movie that could have been directed by Robert Altman.

[00:15:07] It could have been a Robert Altman movie if Jason wasn't in it.

[00:15:09] So yeah, kind of love that one.

[00:15:12] Really putting the cut and shortcuts there.

[00:15:14] Yeah, you got awesome.

[00:15:16] Great.

[00:15:17] Well, thanks so much, Chris.

[00:15:18] This has been great.

[00:15:19] Really excited to have people see In a Violent Nature.

[00:15:21] Thanks so much, Cody.

[00:15:22] We really appreciate the questions.

[00:15:23] Hey, everyone.

[00:15:24] Thank you so much for listening to Cody Derrick's interview with the writer and director for

[00:15:27] In a Violent Nature, Chris Nash here on The Next Best Picture Podcast.

[00:15:32] In a Violent Nature will be released theatrically by IFC Films on May 31st and will be available

[00:15:37] to stream on Shudder later this year.

[00:15:40] You have been listening to The Next Best Picture Podcast.

[00:15:41] We are proud to be part of the Evergreen Podcast Network, and you can subscribe to us anywhere

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[00:16:01] Thank you all so much for listening as always, and we will see you all next time.

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