There are some genres where you can expect a fair amount from them, like sci-fi for example, with its world-building and storytelling - but not the slasher. The only prerequisite most have from it is that there’s a body count, hopefully on the large side.

And for the most part, that’s what slasher films deliver, as to not disappoint their bloodthirsty audience.

Enjoying a fun trip in the woods are a group of friends, who are staying in a cabin. A few of the guys go out exploring and discover an old burnt down fire tower. One of them, Troy (Liam Leone) discovers a gold necklace there, and decides to take it. That was their first mistake.

Later on that night they’re sitting around a campfire, drinking beers, when Ehren (Sam Roulston) decides to tell the story of the White Pines Slaughter, which took place ten years earlier. It’s an urban legend, telling the story of how Johnny (Ry Barrett) got burnt in a fire that could have been avoided, and then went on to seek his revenge.

Little do they know however, that someone is watching them, as they sit there, and he wants his necklace back.

Now for those of a curious disposition, yes, In a Violent Nature ticks the body count box. And then some.

On the surface it is undoubtedly a fairly generic teens in the woods slasher flick. But Chris Nash’s directorial debut is just a tad more cerebral than that.

His film, which he also wrote, differs from many slashers in that it has no soundtrack as such. Any music that appears is ambient from the scene, like a car radio, otherwise it simply uses the soundtrack of the woods. This means that Johnny, the film’s slasher, has no theme tune of any kind, just the sound of leaves rustling and the distant sound of bird song. In fact if he were to have a theme tune that followed his movements, it would be the heavy thud of his footsteps through the undergrowth.

But Nash does use sound rather cleverly throughout. We often follow Johnny walking through the woods, and then hear the dialogue of his prey around him, without either seeing them, or only making them out in the far distance. This adds to the sense of disorientation, never quite knowing if they’re safe enough away – of course they’re not as there’s no such thing in this genre.

It’s the soundtrack of the forest that becomes quite deafening after a while, that somehow manages to amplify the encounters when they happen. And boy do they happen.

The film is deliciously graphic and brutally violent, which is always a bonus for the slasher genre. In fact it harks back to the brutality of eighties video nasties, that always went that little bit too far. Although this may be a Shudder original production, Nash certainly gets the most out of his special effects team who put on a bloody good show.

Johnny is a little on the generic side, clearly having graduated from the Leatherface school of killers, in that he doesn’t speak, and doesn’t have much going on personality wise, and yet when he’s in full swing, he makes for a formidable foe.

In a Violent Nature is your standard slasher then – on the surface at least – and yet Nash delivers something a little more sophisticated than that, making for a more nervy entry in the slasher genre with genuinely more edge.