Back in 2006, local director Chris Nash was named as co-recipient of the Jackson-Triggs Award for Best Emerging Canadian Filmmaker award at the Canadian Film Centre's Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto.
Seventeen years later, Nash is not only living up to the promise of that early career award, he is exceeding it with his latest film, In a Violent Nature, which has been selected to have its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024.
Nash last surfaced with his work in the 2014 horror comedy anthology The ABCs of Death 2.
The filmmaker directed the anthology’s last segment, Z Is For Zygote.
The series, and Nash’s short, received a lot of audience attention.
“Since then I've shot a couple music videos with producing partner Shannon Hanmer for her brother's band, The Birthday Massacre,” says Nash.
“But most of my time has gone into developing a television project, which I can't really talk about yet.”
By 2018, Nash had the concept for his latest film brewing.
“I’ve had the idea for quite a while, but I didn't think much of it until I casually mentioned it to my friends, Steve Kostanski, Andrew Appelle, Shannon Hanmer, and Peter Kuplowsky while working together on Steve's movie, Psycho Goreman,” says Nash.
“They were intrigued by the idea and we all agreed it was worth pursuing. After writing the script and shopping it around, we found funding in 2021 and started shooting a few months later.”
Those friends became the core of the film’s production team.
Nash wrote and directed the film, as well as worked with Steve Kostanski who led prosthetic make-up effects.
Hanmer and Kuplowsky took on the role of producers for the film.
Andrew Appelle was the original cinematographer for the film but had to step away when filming began in the Sault, due to prior commitments directing Vice’s popular docuseries The Dark Side of the Ring.
After Appelle left the production, Pierce Derks stepped in as Director of Photography/Cinematographer.
Lastly, Alex Jacobs joined the team as Editor.
The film also features a song called “Tin Foil Hat” by Sault-based band Jupiter Marvelous.
“It gives a tonne of mood to the scene in which it's heard,” says Nash.
Initially In A Violent Nature was to be filmed in the Kawartha Lakes area, North of Peterborough.
“Ultimately, we decided to film in the Sault,” says the filmmaker.
“We ended up reshooting a great deal of what we captured in the Kawarthas to the point where I'm very comfortable saying this was a local production.”
The filmmaker says most of the film was captured in the Searchmont and Goulais River areas.
“We also shot at the Conservation Authority and a beautiful wood lot in Point Des Chenes,” says Nash.
“A few months after our main unit was finished shooting, we also grabbed a couple interior scenes and pick-up shots in Dundas, Ontario.”
The storyline in the film takes place in our Northern Ontario settings or “nature” as the film title uses as double entendre.
The film starts with a “monster man” being awoken from a shallow grave in the woods.
The camera follows him as he strolls through the forest.
“It is kind of an obnoxious, art-house take on a very traditional slasher-in-the-woods horror movie such as Friday The 13th or The Burning,” he says.
“However, instead of following young people around as they get dispatched one-by-one by a masked monster man, our movie sticks with the slasher the entire time.”
That first-person perspective makes the film unique.
It also allowed Nash to find opportunities to knock off campers “in fun and gruesome ways.”
The filmmaker is proud of the creative ways his characters meet their ends.
“Although my movie exists in a world of familiar horror tropes and contains a good deal of special and make-up effects, I'm hesitant to call it a horror movie, because I don't think it's that scary,” he says.
“I wouldn't say it's boring because it certainly has a propulsive-ness within it, but it's a very minimal film and doesn't have the tension of a traditional horror movie. From the beginning, we told ourselves that we'd treat it almost like a nature documentary. Our monster man is a predator hunting his prey which is just as pompous as it sounds.”
Like many productions, Nash and his team faced more than their share of problems on their journey to a completed film.
“Everything from unprecedented extreme weather to losing our lead actor to malfunctioning equipment to sick crew members,” says Nash.
“By the end of it, my production team and I were so calloused we felt bulletproof. A week before we were scheduled to finish principal photography, producer Shannon Hanmer and I spent the night in the emergency room after a rusty nail went through my foot up on Ranger Lake Road. Luckily for us, our assistant director Nate Wilson is also an incredibly talented filmmaker [who just premiered his first feature The All Golden at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX] and stepped in to get some great footage while I waited to get a tetanus shot.”
For Nash, the theme of the film explores deeper societal and psychological themes, but he has never been a fan of filmmakers getting on a soapbox.
“If it was really about what the filmmakers think it's about, then the audience should understand that message themselves. You shouldn't have to explicitly tell them.”
Nash and team were excited when they got word that the film would be premiered at Sundance, one of the most important film festivals in the world.
They are also tempering their expectations.
“Some of my favourite filmmakers have had their debut at Sundance, but for every Steven Soderbergh or Darren Aronofsky movie, there are a hundred other films that disappear into the ether,” he says.
Nash understands that it is always hard to gauge how an actual audience is going to react to a film.
“The team and I are planning to attend the premiere so we can watch ourselves disappear into the ether first hand,” he laughs.
“The reality is the only thing getting invited to Sundance means is that at least one person liked your film and they just happen to be in a position of influence.”
Despite his self-deprecating outlook, many top management agencies, producers, and distributors attend Sundance and they are often on the lookout for new talent.
Being selected can open up a lot of doors for a filmmaker and can lead to new opportunities for funding, distribution, and collaboration.
It also often means that the film may be screened at other festivals, which can also help to raise the filmmaker's profile and bring more exposure to their work.
“As of right now, we don't have any concrete plans for the film after Sundance,” he says.
“The only thing I know for sure is that it will be on SHUDDER [the horror streaming service who graciously funded the film] sometime in the future. We're still figuring out the best way forward with the film”
On a final note, Nash wanted to thank many local people who helped with the film along the way.
“We had an undeserving amount of local help from people such as Kim Kienhofer at Stokely Creek Lodge, Arne Larsen at Searchmont, Denis McCormack at Saw Pit Bay, Corrina Barrett and Christine Ropeter at the Conservation Authority, Tonya Hatton at the Quality Inn, Mark Brown and Karen Morley at Point Des Chenes, Peggy Greco at Prince Township, my parents, and countless other friends and family who volunteered props, vehicles, talents, and time to help us get this thing done.”
More information on In a Violent Nature can be found on the Sundance website.