What's Wrong is Right

Practical Gore in "In a Violent Nature"

Jan 16, 2025

Illustration: Screencap from this behind-the-scenes video.

The line between fear and horror lies in the upsetting of the natural order. To be faced with a bear in the woods is scary – to be faced with a bear in the woods who walks with the gait of a man and has eyes like your own in horrifying. In a Violent Nature, the 2024 slasher film written and directed by Chris Nash, doesn’t give us an unnatural bear but a human animal in the form of Johnny, who is at once the film’s protagonist, perspective character, and slasher. Nash and special effects lead Steven Kostanski, who had previously worked together on Psycho Goreman, excel in not only the production of practical effects, but in their narrative application in film. Much of the debate surrounding practical versus computer generated effects is focused on how realistic and grand the effects produced can be. But oftentimes it is the subtleties that take a gore scene from scary to horrifying, and just the right amount of unrealism gives practical gore a greater unsettling effect.

Ehren is the second kill of the movie but the first to be shown on-screen. After leaning against a tree to smoke and listen to his “vintage” Walkman, Johnny appears behind the tree, holds a one-man crosscut saw in front of Ehren’s face, and pulls it towards himself. The saw catches between Ehren’s jaws, and he desperately grabs the handles over Johnny’s hands as he tries to push it away from him. The ambient foley of the forest is filled with a crunching sound. Ehren is no match for Johnny’s strength as the saw tears through his cheeks inch by inch. Shot over Johnny’s shoulder, we hear one final shunk as Ehren’s head relents and the saw passes through and into the bark of the tree. Ehren’s arms let go, and the audience sees his face “whole” for a final second before the top half slides off.

Aurora’s contortion – dubbed the “Yoga Kill” by many articles claiming viewers ran out of the theatre vomiting – takes place upon a scenic cliff where Johnny corners her after approaching her from behind. Aurora attempts to run away and only finds herself at the cliff’s edge. She seems to have a moment of acceptance before Johnny grabs her shoulder and pushes one end of a pair of drag hooks through her torso with a deliciously sickening squelch. He pulls his hand out and leaves the hook dangling before Aurora turns around and faces him with an expression of muted disbelief. Johnny promptly rears up and stabs the other hook into the crown of her head before spinning her around and placing a boot on her back. He grabs the chain and pulls. The moment drags on as the audience feels the effort it takes, sees Aurora’s neck bulge and grow blue with popped veins as it is broken and her head tips towards her stomach. Johnny pauses to wrap the chain around his hand and pull harder, more cracks heard as her spine curls and her forehead touches the wet edges of the hole. One final, loud pull sends Aurora’s head bursting through her back, dead eyes finding the audience for just a moment before Johnny drops her body and sighs.

Computer generated imagery was a massive advancement in film when it was first developed and producers rushed to see how far it could be taken. But now that CGI has had its time to settle, many in the film industry feel that practical effects have a much “realer” quality to them that makes them preferable when possible. In an interview with Cilian Murphy for Vanity Fair about Barbie and Oppenheimer, actress and producer Margot Robbie described this effect, saying “...what CGI can do... is incredible as a tool to compliment work... But when it’s relied on too heavily, there’s something about that infinite quality to looking at something that... could go on forever where... I get detached... something in me can sense that it’s not real, and so I don’t really care.”1

Fede Alvarez, director of Alien: Romulus expressed in a behind-the-scenes interview how this is even truer for horror. “Well I think when it comes to horror... practical is always scarier. When you feel, you can see that the actor is first of all interacting with the creature... it’s gotta be real.”2 This sentiment was felt among the crew on set for In a Violent Nature. In behind-the-scenes footage of Ehren’s head sliding apart, a crew member holds the forehead of the model of actor Sam Roulston’s head to keep it in place, then lets it go to allow it to slowly fall to the ground. After cut is called, a crew member can be heard saying, “It’s creepy in real life.” Another responds, “It was really gross.”3

But why do practical effects work especially well in horror films? The answer lies not only in what they do well, but in what they do wrong. Making down-to-the-pore perfect lifecasts of actors is incredibly difficult and requires a budget far beyond what In a Violent Nature had. Even if said casts were “perfect”, just like the deceased, there’s always a little something off in the eyes. Most practical bodies, and certainly those used for Ehren and Aurora, fall into the uncanny valley.

In his essay “The Uncanny Valley”, Masahiro Mori described a “valley” in a hypothetical graph where an object with a face appears too human but not quite human enough and thus registers in the brain as threatening or unsettling. As he was working with and writing for the purpose of robotics, he illustrates this concept with the example of a prosthetic hand. While they may look convincingly human from afar, they become recognizably artificial up close and when touched.4

One of the most difficult things to reproduce in film is a dead body. There is a very particular look to the face of a deceased person that is near-impossible for a live actor to imitate. However, the slightly-off look of practical bodies accomplishes a similar effect by taking the face into the uncanny valley. It’s often said that practical effects have more visual presence in the final product of a scene than CGI. Could this reality and unreality come together to a greater sum of their parts? This uncanniness and the prop’s actual presence in scene with the actors combine to horrify the viewer almost as if the events were real.

Obscuring the “seams” of practical effects is one way to achieve greater realism and works well with most smaller, injury-based gore. However, gore that leans into body horror and which necessarily involves the human face needs to contend with the uncanny valley. In the case of Ehren’s partial decapitation, this is done by allowing the actual severing to take up less time on the screen. The scene frequently cuts between shots of Ehren’s face, the back of Johnny, and Ehren’s torso dripping with blood. These cuts, along with foley of bone crunching, create the illusion that the severing is happening slowly with one final slice at the end. If slowed down, all of the shots showing Roulston’s face before the model is used clearly have the fake saw in the same position in his mouth. Similar quick cuts are used to limit the amount of time the model of Charlotte Creaghan’s head is shown during Aurora’s death. The scene primarily focuses on her torso, but a small, near-imperceptible cut is used for the shot where Johnny hooks her head so that the actress’ real face can be used. All shots where the model’s head is present are in profile, with the exception of the moment when her head is pulled through her body. When this is done, the face is partially obscured by the blood, gore, and hair pulled through with it.

Not all seams should be obscured, though, and practical effect’s biggest boon for horror is the ability to replicate the uneasy feeling of looking at an actual dead body. In their article responding to and expanding upon Masahiro’s work, Mahdi Muhammad Moosa and S.M. Minhaz Ud-Dean explore how the uncanny valley could have evolved as a mechanism of danger avoidance relating to the presence of human corpses in an area. They challenge the popular idea that evolved from Masahiro's work that the response had to do with pathogen exposure and argue that, in the early days of humanity, there were a myriad of reasons to leave an area where there were human corpses. They explain that “...most deaths were premature, and caused by predators, invaders, disaster, or disease. Many of these fatal agents were localized near freshly dead conspecifics... many predators used to stay close to the carcass of their preys, accidents were found at the very sites of the disaster. Consequently, dead bodies were considered as indications of potentially fatal danger. Individuals avoiding a fresh corpse were more likely to avoid these threats.”5

They then present a list of various corpses in order of least to most disturbing. The list begins with dead insects and ends with “6. Decomposing large animal 7. Human corpse 8. Decomposing/freshly dead mutilated corpse 9. Freshly dead mutilated corpse with sudden movements.” Our first introduction to gore and death in the film is the severely decomposed corpse of a fox. Having died in a fox trap, it lies prone for the camera – a shriveled, blackened, emaciated thing. It is both desiccated skin and brackish stomach fluid, still and crawling with flies. Of course, it foreshadows the first kill resulting from a forgotten bear trap, but the body being so thoroughly decomposed holds greater meaning that a killing has taken place for neither food nor fear, and warning that it will happen again. A small, shriveled thing is not an uncommon use for CGI, but it is also not uncommon for the resulting image to be uncanny in the direction of humor rather than horror. The space the fox corpse fills in the screen and the visible indent it leaves in its world as new plants sprout around it result in a stronger image both visually and emotionally.

But what is most relevant in Moosa and Ud-Dean's list to In a Violent Nature’s use of practical gore are the final two points – mutilated human corpses and moving mutilated human corpses. One of the most striking things about a corpse, especially if you knew the person in life, is how still they are. This is why it is so difficult for live actors to play convincing corpses – you simply cannot relax all of the muscles in your face. What’s especially unsettling and unlikely for someone to see in their life is a dead but still moving body. As Moosa and Ud-Dead explain, it “...is indicative of the greatest degree of danger because it clearly suggests that the death-causing agent might be in close vicinity. It has been found that moving synthetic agents appear to be uncannier than the static ones.'“6

This intersection between the uncanniness of a still, lifeless face and the horror of when it is no longer still is what makes the last moment of Ehren’s decapitation such a successful use of practical gore. All of the many muscles in his face – which were just emoting in terror – appear to be still, with the exception of the quivering of his eyes and the flicking of his tongue when the top of his head slides off. Were the rest of his face to be moving along with the eyes, the effect of the movement would not only have been diminished, but potentially come across as comical. It is unrealistic to the viewer that he could still be making any sort of expression, but it is just realistic enough for his eyes to move side-to-side in an otherwise solidly still face for the model head to evoke both lifeless corpse and uncanny movement. The tongue is less realistic and borders on comical, but can still evoke the extra discomfort caused by a mutilated corpse as opposed to a regular one, as it shows the viewer an “inside” of Ehren that their mind knows it is not meant to see.

Aurora’s death does not make use of subtle postmortem movements the way Ehren’s does, but this is offset by the shocking amount of near-death movement before her neck is broken as she is turned around twice and is still on her feet. The extent of the mutilation, and the way her body is forced to take a completely unnatural shape, builds the wholly wrong and uncanny state of her. For her to move after death would be over the top.

What Aurora’s death makes best use of is the deadness of her eyes. The filmmakers are careful to keep the viewer from seeing her model face too much or too closely. The one exception is the short moment when the head is pulled through her torso and the model face is revealed directly to the camera. As the model is pulled through the hole in the body’s torso, thick blood, viscera, and hair obscure the less realistic features. When the head is successfully pulled through, Aurora’s silicone eyes fall upon the camera and beyond it to the viewer. Here, the uncanny valley effect of a not quite human head and distinctly human eyes replicate in the viewer the feeling of watching a real death. Aurora’s body’s ability to stay standing throughout the scene is remarkable and strange to the point of almost being comedic. But those uncanny eyes peering out from under globs of stomach, upside down and inside out, brings the scene back to earth before we see her body tossed as if it were worth nothing more than the few moments of entertainment. Although seen only from a distance and thus not depicting further gore, the body’s effects on its environment as Johnny kicks her over the cliff and she disturbs sand and rocks which go on to create ripples in the river are further examples of the impact of practical effects. The audience does not see Aurora’s face hit the ground as she falls, they do not see further clumps of her disconnect and remain behind in the soil, but they feel the impact of her death as it ripples across the water.

In a Violent Nature lives up to its name. It knows how to use its most violent and vile kills not just to shock its audience, but to deeply horrify them. The partial dismemberment of Ehren employs quick cuts to hide the lack of advancing injury on the actor until the model is brought in to bring the struggle to a shuddering then silicone-still end. By utilizing practical gore over CGI, the film pulls you in close and refuses to let go, refuses to let you look away from its empty, rubber eyes. The contortion of Aurora is almost comical in its absurd creativity, implausibility, and vehement hatred. And yet the filmmakers remind you she is human, or was, before she is tossed away. The careful choices made in what to show, what to obscure, and what to keep off-screen demonstrate not only expertise in and love for the horror genre from its filmmakers, but a deeper, more honest, more natural approach to horrifying your audience. Its practical effects reach deep into our DNA to pull forth evolutionary fears of the uncanny and freshly inhuman to weave amongst suggestions of modern concerns of environmental destruction, classism, and ableism. Just like evolution, In a Violent Nature is drawn-out, it is slow, and it will catch up to you eventually. Once it does, you won’t know what hit you.

What's Wrong is Right

Practical Gore in "In a Violent Nature"

Illustration: Screencap from this behind-the-scenes video.

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