15 Extremely Brutal Slasher Horror Movies To Watch After In A Violent Nature -

Warning: This article contains imagery of violence and gore that may be disturbing for some readers.

Similar movies to In a Violent Nature deliver the brutality that horror fans love and that will likely be too much for some viewers. The new horror offering premiered at Sundance in 2024 before coming to theaters on May 31. Helmed by director and special effects supervisor Chris Nash, the movie, which stars Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Liam Leone, and Reece Presley, has turned out a solid performance on Rotten Tomatoes, earning a Certified Fresh score of 83% aggregated from reviews written by more than 100 critics.

The movie hearkens back to many classic slashers, particularly the Friday the 13th franchise, with antagonist Jason Voorhees providing a major inspiration for the 2024 movie’s hulking, silent killer. The movie even pays homage to this inspiration by featuring a performance from Lauren Taylor, who played one of Jason’s earliest victims in 1981’s Friday the 13th Part 2. While In a Violent Nature‘s brutal kills put it a cut above many other horror movies in terms of intensity, for viewers who are hungry for more, there are quite a few earlier slashers that match its extreme approach.

15

Thanksgiving (2023)

Eli Roth’s Wild Holiday Horror Movie

Thanksgiving

7/10

Release Date: November 17, 2023
Runtime: 106 Minutes
Director: Eli Roth
Writers: Eli Roth, Jeff Rendell

Thanksgiving is the latest horror movie from Eli Roth, a filmmaker known for his grim take on the genre thanks to the Hostel movies. Thanksgiving began as a fake movie trailer attached to Grindhouse, but decades later, it grew into its own wild slasher flick. The movie is set in a small town around the holidays that is still reeling from a tragedy during last year’s Black Friday sales event that left several residents dead. With the holidays approaching once again, a killer in a pilgrim outfit begins targeting those who were involved in the incident.

Thanksgiving might seem like a comedy-horror movie that follows the trend of holiday horror films, but it actually takes a lot from the giallo horror genre, with Roth clearly being a fan. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, which separates it somewhat from the more gritty feel of In a Violent Nature. However, it does take its kills seriously with this silent killer in a silly costume, dishing out some shocking amounts of gore.

14

High Tension (2005)

An Intense Horror Chase Movie

High Tension

Release Date: June 10, 2005
Runtime: 85 minutes
Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur

Cast

Horror movie director Alexandre Aja made his debut in the genre with what many fans still consider his scariest movie to date. High Tension follows two young women on a road trip who stop to spend the night at one of their family’s farmhouses. However, when a mysterious stranger arrives in the night and begins murdering everyone inside the house, the girls are sent on a desperate chase to attempt to escape the sadistic killer on their trail.

High Tension‘s controversial twist ending helps to connect it more to In a Violent Nature and the bold approach of putting the audience in the mind of the killer. However, while enjoyed as a simple, gritty, and brutal horror movie, High Tension more than delivers. Aja packs incredible suspense and nerve-wrecking tension in several standout sequences while also depicting the violence in an unflinching way.

13

Halloween II (2009)

Rob Zombie’s Bleak And Brutal Sequel

Halloween II

Release Date: August 28, 2009
Runtime: 105 minutes
Producers: Andrew G. La Marca, Andy Gould, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Malek Akkad

Malcolm McDowell

Dr. Samuel Loomis
Scout Taylor-Compton

Laurie Strode

Michael Myers is obviously one of the most iconic horror movie killers of all time, but the character was changed from an emotionless and relentless masked murderer to a monstrous and unstoppable killing machine in Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies. While the first movie certainly showed this controversial side of Michael that not every fan enjoyed, Zombie’s sequel is an even more gruesome and bleak take on the horror icon.

Former wrestler Tyler Mane plays Michael Myers in Halloween II, and his imposing figure adds to the feel that he is an inhuman monster more similar to Johnny in In a Violent Nature than other Halloween iterations. Like In a Violent Nature, Halloween II also examines Michael in a way that seeks to make him more sympathetic, even when he is delivering some of the most brutal kills in the entire Halloween franchise.

12

Wolf Creek (2005)

A Grounded Australian Horror Experience

Wolf Creek

Release Date: December 25, 2005
Runtime: 99 minutes
Director: Greg Mclean
Writers: Greg Mclean

A horror movie killer like Johnny in In a Violent Nature is so disturbing, partially because there seems to be no reasoning with him. Once he is awakened, he is on a relentless mission and will kill everyone he comes across. However, this inability to reason with a killer is even more disturbing when it is not a mindless supernatural killer, but rather a real human being who is simply driven by their own sadistic desires to torture and kill.

Wolf Creek is a fine example of this, with the introduction of the terrifying horror movie killer Mick Taylor. The movie follows a group of friends who are backpacking through the Australian outback only to come across Mick, who presents himself as a friendly stranger, only to begin hunting the innocent friends for no other reason than his own amusement. It is a truly harrowing movie, especially with the suggestion that Wolf Creek is based on a true story.

11

Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)

A Horror Movie With The Killer As The Protagonist

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Release Date: January 5, 1990
Runtime: 83 minutes
Director: John McNaughton
Writers: Richard Fire, John McNaughton
Producers: Malik B. Ali, Steven A. Jones, Lisa Dedmond

Mary Demas

Dead Woman / Dead Prostitute / Hooker #1

In a Violent Nature is a bold and experimental approach to the slasher movie, giving audiences something that is entirely from the perspective of the horror movie killer. The fact that In a Violent Nature‘s Johnny is a mindless and silent killer like Jason Voorhees makes it an especially bold move, but In a Violent Nature is not the only movie that puts the killer as the protagonist and shows his brutality firsthand.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer was an early movie to take this approach, with Michael Rooker delivering a chilling performance in the lead role as a man who meets up with an old acquaintance and begins showing him the methods by which he has become a prolific and unrepentant serial killer. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is not as gory as In a Violent Nature, but it disturbing to spend so much time with such a dark character.

10

A Bay Of Blood (1971)

An Influential Italian Giallo

An eye looking through blinds in Bay of Blood

The brutality of Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood is perhaps best exemplified by one of the Italian movie’s many alternative titles, which is Twitch of the Death Nerve. A major inspiration for Friday the 13th, the murder mystery’s lakeside setting, high body count, and And Then There Were None approach to murder and mayhem laid the groundwork for many slashers to come.

The movie is also notable for featuring some of the goriest murders of the early 1970s, a period in cinema that birthed a series of intense horror movies including The Last House on the Left and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. These murders include a grisly decapitation, a billhook splitting a man’s face in two, and a sequence where a couple is impaled simultaneously with a spear while mid-coitus, a kill that was later recreated in Friday the 13th Part 2.

Collage of knives to throats from Friday the 13th and A Bay of Blood

The Brutal Horror Movie Friday The 13th Copied (Not Halloween)

You likely know about Friday the 13th’s American influences, but an earlier Italian horror movie called A Bay of Blood also inspired the 1980 slasher.

9

Anthropophagus: The Beast (1980)

A Violent Video Nasty

A Scared Woman Emerging from a Wine Barrel in Anthropophagus

Another Italian offering, the 1980 movie Anthropophagus: The Beast was directed by Joe D’Amato, who was best known for his lurid horror titles and adult films. This movie was one of 39 titles that were successfully prosecuted in the UK for being in violation of the Obscene Publications Act 1959, a group of titles that subsequently became known as “video nasties” that also includes A Bay of Blood and D’Amato’s later movie Absurd.

Anthropophagus, which stars George Eastman and Tisa Farrow, the sister of Mia Farrow, is a grotesquely violent movie that follows a group of vacationers who stumble upon an abandoned Greek island where they are stalked by a cannibalistic murderer. The violence and gore in the movie are almost unparalleled as the murderer’s violent nature threatens to consume everything and everyone around him, including himself.

8

The Prowler (1981)

An Intense Early Slasher

The Prowler

Release Date: June 26, 1981
Runtime: 89 Minutes
Director: Joseph Zito
Writers: Glenn Leopold, Neal Barbera, Eric Lewald

The most important contributor to the potency of the early ’80s slasher The Prowler is make-up effects maestro Tom Savini. Savini, who is also an actor known for movies including From Dusk Till Dawn and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, cut his teeth as a guru of gore on early genre movies made by director George A. Romero, including the 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. He went on to set the gold standard for the 1980s slasher film by crafting the kills for the original Friday the 13th.

The Prowler, released one year after Friday, showcases some of Savini’s most grotesque and convincing effects of all time. The kills enacted by the movie’s army fatigues-clad killer include pitchfork impalations and a brutally detailed glimpse at a character being stabbed through the skull with a bayonet. Naturally, the movie was also targeted as a video nasty in the UK, though it avoided full prosecution.

7

The Burning (1981)

A Classic Summer Camp Slasher

The Burning

Release Date: May 8, 1981
Runtime: 91 Minutes
Director: Tony Maylam

Another Tom Savini title, The Burning was another movie like A Bay of Blood and Anthropophagus that was successfully prosecuted as a video nasty. A summer camp slasher in the same vein as Friday the 13th, The Burning ups the ante by putting younger characters in the path of the killer and featuring brutal slayings by a killer wielding a pair of hedge clippers. One of the movie’s most memorable sequences involves an entire raft full of campers being massacred in a melee of bloody violence.

The Burning is also notable for featuring early performances from a cadre of well-known actors including Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Holly Hunter. While it does not enjoy the same reputation as a household name slasher title like Friday the 13th, the movie has retained a sizeable cult following and is available on Blu-Ray and 4K UHD via Scream Factory.

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6

Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

An Iconic Franchise Entry

The third title in a row to feature gore effects by Tom Savini, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter proves just how influential the make-up wizard was over the slasher genre’s Golden Age in the early 1980s. This movie, which was intended to end the slasher franchise that has since gone on to include eight more installments at the time of writing, features some of the most intense and shocking kills ever perpetrated by Jason or any other Friday the 13th killer, a roster that also includes his mother Pamela Voorhees and a later copycat.

Jason’s kills in the movie include crushing a man’s skull against a shower wall, impaling a young Crispin Glover’s hand with a corkscrew, throwing an axe through a doorway into a woman’s chest, and much more. However, what is perhaps the pièce de résistance of the movie is Jason’s own violent treatment at the hands of the young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman).