Oddity / In A Violent Nature

It's a Shudder Double Feature, Charlie Brown!

Oct 11, 2024

It’s trunk-or-treat day at my kid’s daycare, and I’m in the throes of preparing the trunk I signed up for. It will feature the giant cauldron I mentioned in this post. I’m a bit nervous that it will be *too scary* for the preschool-and-younger aged crowd served by the daycare. But every childhood needs a little Halloween-induced trauma, amirite? 😅

Anyway, two of the summer’s notable indie horror movies, Oddity and In a Violent Nature, just dropped on Shudder. So let's talk about ‘em.

Oddity: 2024's Best Horror Movie?

Synopsis: After the brutal murder of her twin sister, a blind curio shop owner brings a strange wooden doll to the house where she was murdered in order to find answers.

I think Oddity really benefited from how overhyped Longlegs was. Longlegs entered theaters on July 12, and Oddity followed a week later on July 19. Longlegs had something Oddity didn’t, however: a months-long promotional campaign, which was admittedly pretty awesome and made Longlegs seem like it was going to be the horror movie of the decade.

Spoiler-alert: it is not the movie of the decade.

I don’t know why I have such beef with Longlegs. The movie’s not terrible, and not even close to the worst horror movie that’s come out this year. I think it’s an “Emperor’s New Clothes” type of situation where I’m frustrated by constantly being told how great of a movie it is when it really is just kind of middling.

But this isn’t a Longlegs review. I only bring it up because whenever I hear Oddity mentioned online, it always seems to be in relation to Longlegs: “Longlegs isn’t the movie of the year, Oddity is.” Or, “Longlegs was okay, but Oddity was way better.”

I agree with that last statement for the most part. Oddity is a much more cohesive movie than Longlegs, and has a more consistent internal logic. It’s also much smaller in scope and way more self-contained, which may or may not be a point in its favor. Longlegs did try to be something different, and I have to give it credit for that.

Separated from the whole Longlegs conversation, Oddity is a pretty great movie. It’s insanely creepy, and has two of the most effective jump scares I’ve ever seen. It’s one of the better movies to come out this year, possibly the best depending on who you’re asking, but will it be remembered with the same fondness as a movie like Hereditary in five or ten years? Unlikely.

That may say more about the quality of horror movie 2024 has produced than anything else.

In a Violent Nature: The Most Relaxed You’ll Ever Feel While Watching a Slasher Movie

Synopsis: Seventy years after being cruelly murdered in the logging town where he lived, “Johnny” is brought back to life by a group of careless college students and proceeds to wreak havoc on anyone in his path.

I'm not a huge fan of slasher movies. A film in that genre has to be something special to catch my eye. I’m just not a fan of gore, or the misogynistic glorification of toxic aggression that seems to permeate that subgenre and fans of it. (“Not all slasher movies,” she says, both in earnest and sarcastically.)

I deliberated on seeing In a Violent Nature when it was in my local theater. I’d heard that it was artsy, a slow burn, and had brought something new to the genre. A plus for me. But then I also heard that it was extremely violent and had especially depraved kills. Not really my thing. On top of that, people said it was guilty of the most egregious sin a horror film can commit: it was BORING.

Which of these disparate descriptions was true? It turns out the answer is yes.

The dilemma of seeing this movie was eventually decided for me, because it was only given a one-week run (which I guess is normal for Shudder movies in my theater.) So I did not see it until it was added to Shudder’s streaming service last month.

There is a bit of a gimmick to this movie: instead of being in the POV of the victims, we are squarely focused on the killer, following from directly behind Johnny in a sort-of reverse It Follows style for most of the movie.

And that’s the boring part: for much of this movie we’re literally watching Johnny walking through the woods. I’m a very patient movie viewer. I love a good slow burn and am willing to wait for a pay-off. So it’s saying something when I tell you that even I was getting annoyed by all the foliage.

Juxtaposed with that are the kills. It’s true that a couple of them are extremely brutal. Like, Terrifier-level mean1. There was one that had me on the edge of my seat, asking myself if I REALLY wanted to watch this movie after all. These two kills are weirdly juxtaposed with some of the other deaths in the movie, one of which is cut away from and another that happens completely out of view of the camera.

The ending rubbed a lot of people the wrong way due to an overblown monologue from a random character. This monologue bothered me for a different reason: in the monologue, the woman says that some animals just kill basically because it’s in their nature, and there’s no other reason why beyond that. The implication is that Johnny is like an animal and kills for basically no reason at all.

First of all, I have an issue with the unfortunately common trope of a horror movie villain who is now evil because they were unfairly killed or harmed in some way. Like, revenge is one thing, but formerly good or neutral characters perpetuating violence indefinitely on people who had nothing to do with their mistreatment is something that gets my goat2 - especially when the “villain” is a member of a misunderstood group. For example, Johnny is described as someone with developmental disabilities.

This leads me to my next gripe with the monologue. So we’re supposed to deduce that it’s just in Johnny’s nature to be violent? It’s super icky that a mentally disabled person is being compared to a violent animal in this way. I know that this movie is homaging slashers from the 70’s and 80’s, like Friday the Thirteenth, but it’s still 2024 right now and it’s super regressive.

I did like In a Violent Nature a lot more than most slashers. Johnny’s character design–especially the old-school firefighter mask–was *mwuh* chef’s kiss. I listened to an interview with the director on the Too Scary, Didn’t Watch podcast where he explained how he had worked on special effects in many horror movies and had gotten tired of the typical slasher kills and wanted to do something different. And boy, did he. Even the “boring” kills were unique in some way.

I definitely suggest giving this one a watch, even if it’s just so you can understand what people are talking about when they mention the “yoga scene.”

What did you think of these two movies? Comment and let me know! I want to hear from you.

Currently Reading

I just started Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle. Like, literally still on the first page. I’m dragging my feet on truly starting it because I’d rather read something with major Halloween vibes, but I haven’t really found anything that fits the bill.

Do you have any suggestions?

The Dukes of Horror Podcast

And don’t forget to listen to the most recent Dukes of Horror Episode about The Crow (1994):

The more I think about it, these kills aren’t that cruel. because **SPOILERS** When the yoga girl’s head is pulled back through her chest, she is already dead and can’t feel anything. Even the one that personally bothered me, the park ranger’s death via mechanical log splitter, wasn’t so bad. It was definitely more personal due to the park ranger being involved in retrapping Johnny in the first place, but the park ranger was already paralyzed, and therefore couldn’t feel anything.

I feel like I’m not explaining this very succinctly. It’s something that’s always bothered me about certain movies, and I hope to explain it better in a future post.