In a Violent Nature (2024) Ending Explained

Welcome to Knockout Horror and to this In a Violent Nature Ending Explained article. We just checked out this fantastic little Shudder Original Slasher from Chris Nash and really enjoyed it. If you haven’t watched it yet, what the hell are you doing here? This article is full of spoilers. You should read our review, first, watch the movie and then come back here.

In a Violent Nature is a brand new horror movie that turns the slasher genre on its head by showing us things from the killer’s perspective. Today we are going to try explaining the ending in less than 1,600 words, not including this intro and the outro. That’s five minutes of reading so let’s go.

What Happens in In a Violent Nature?

A group of friends are having fun at the site of a derelict fire tower. While there, they discover a locket. One of the friends stashes the locket on his person and the group head off. Little do they realise that the place they found the locket just so happens to be the resting ground of an undead killer known as Johnny.

The locket actually belonged to Johnny’s mother and was the one thing tying him to his burial place. Johnny rises from the earth. Hell bent on recovering the locket that was stolen from him. First he arrives at the house of a trapper. Seeing a locket in the man’s house, Johnny enters. The man returns, firing a warning shot at Johnny as he incorrectly believes him to be the park ranger.

Johnny takes the gun from the man and begins pursuing him into the woods. The man stumbles into one of his own bear traps where Johnny murders him. Johnny returns to the house to retrieve the locket only to realise that it wasn’t actually his mother’s locket; it was a medallion belonging to the home owner.

The Pursuit Continues

Continuing his search, Johnny eventually stumbles upon the group of friends from earlier. Ehren is retelling the story of Johnny’s death. Troy, pulling the locket out, realises that he is in possession of the killer’s property. The group head inside. Ehren, heads out into the woods. Johnny finds him and kills him before dragging his corpse to the ranger’s office. He breaks in before taking a firefighter mask, an axe and a dragging hook.

The next day, Johnny spots Brodie and Aurora hanging out at the lake. He walks under the water and drowns Brodie before eventually catching up to Aurora and brutally murdering her. Johnny continues his pursuit of the remaining friends.

Arguing over the missing members of their group. One of them throws the car keys into the woods. Johnny plays with the toy car on the keys. A member of the group finds Johnny’s axe in the woods. Alarmed, two of them, Colt and Kris, speed away on an ATV.

Johnny approaches the cabin where Troy and Evan are. He jams the horn on the truck to lure them out. He attacks Troy when he emerges. Evan comes out and shoots Johnny. The pair attempt to escape believing Johnny to be dead. Johnny stands up and kills Evan with the axe before finishing Troy off. Neither of the pair have the Locket so Johnny continues his search.

From Bad to Worse

Colt and Kris return to the cabin after discovering Ehren’s body. Only to spot Johnny and hightail it out of there. They head to the ranger’s station to get help. Johnny later arrives at the ranger’s station where he spots the friends. Kris is wearing the locket and the ranger is chastising them. Explaining that the locket was the only thing keeping Johnny buried in the ground.

Johnny approaches but the ranger shoots him in the chest. The ranger instructs Colt to grab some chains. Telling the pair to wrap Johnny up. Colt refuses so the ranger offers Colt the shotgun and says he will do it. In the seconds between the gun being exchanged, Johnny grabs it, prompting Colt and Kris to run. Johnny breaks the ranger’s back before cutting off his head with a log splitter.

Johnny eventually catches up to Kris and Colt who are hatching a plan but Johnny hears everything they are planning. Colt attempts to distract Johnny who immediately turns around and crushes his head. He pounds Colt into custard while Kris leaves the locket at the scene and runs for her life. After running the entire night she manages to flag down a passing motorist who offers to take her to the hospital.

Who Was Johnny?

Johnny was the developmentally delayed son of a merchant. This merchant would set up shop at logging sites. There, he would charge the workers hugely inflated prices on basic goods. The workers despised Johnny’s dad for this exploitation and took it out on Johnny. Things got even worse when one of the loggers, while drunk, tripped on one of Johnny’s toy cars. Breaking his ankle in the process.

To get back at the old merchant. They told Johnny that they had found a huge bag of toys and to meet them at the old fire tower. Johnny snuck out at night to get his hands on the toys but, when he climbed to the top, there were no toys. Instead, one of the workers, wearing a firefighter’s mask, scared Johnny. Resulting in him falling to his death from the tower.

The men covered up the killing by placing a firefighter’s mask on Johnny to make it look like he was playing there by himself and fell. Johnny’s dad didn’t believe this and, when confronting the men, was killed after a fight broke out. The logging company covered it up and nobody was brought to justice.

Johnny’s Revenge

A week later, a few executives showed up to the camp to find a massacre. Every person there, with the exception of one, was dead, torn to pieces. Once again, the company paid to have the issue go away. One of the police said that he spotted a man in a mask watching the scene but nothing came of it.

The only person to survive the massacre was the father of the local park ranger. It would seem that Johnny carried on pursuing the man with revenge in mind. The man managed to subdue Johnny and put him in the ground near the fire tower. A decade later, however, Johnny rose from the dead again.

He, once again, hunted the man down. Killing many of the people around him before eventually killing the only person who escaped the initial massacre. The man’s son, the ranger, managed to stop Johnny before he could be killed himself. Placing Johnny in the ground at the fire tower with the locket to keep him in place. He intends to do the same again, this time permanently. But Johnny paralyses him before chopping off his arm, which the ranger can’t feel due to paralysis, and then his head.

What Does Johnny Want?

Johnny simply wants his mother’s locket back. It was given to him by his father and was the one thing keeping him in a restful state at his burial site. When Troy stole it, Johnny’s spirit woke up and he went on a rampage to retrieve it.

The fire tower, the firefighter’s mask, the drag hook and the axe all play a big part in Johnny’s story. He is buried at the fire tower he fell from. The locket keeps him at piece. The firefighters mask that he retrieved from the ranger’s station was the type he was scared by, causing his death, and the type the loggers placed on his dead body.

Johnny likely wears the mask to scare people because he, himself, found it scary. The weapons he uses are of significance to him. The drag hook and axe are both logging tools, likely used by the people he spent a lot of time around while his dad worked as a merchant for them. Johnny is developmentally delayed, hence why he plays with the toy car on the friend’s keys.

What Happened to Johnny?

Director Chris Nash explains away some of the slasher tropes by giving Johnny unnatural powers. He can hear whispered conversations, clearly, from a distance; he is an undead supernatural being after all. Meaning that when Colt and Kris are planning to distract him, lead him to the fire tower and trap him there, burning him in the process. He hears their entire plan.

Colt tries to distract Johnny but Johnny is ready for him, splitting his head with the axe. Johnny goes into a frenzy, bludgeoning the corpse of Colt. Kris leaves the locket on the gasoline and runs. Johnny, apparently, retrieves the locket.

Whether or not he returned to his place of resting, or not, is left up for debate. It can probably be assumed that he won’t need to murder anyone now. He has his locket back, the loggers that caused his death are dead and the ranger who buried him ten years ago is dead, as well. Meaning he can rest; at least until someone steals the locket again.

What Happened to Kris?

Kris runs through the night. She is clearly suffering from PTSD due to the things she has seen. While running, she constantly hears Johnny behind her. She hears the sound of him attacking Colt with the axe and is completely disorientated. When she makes it to the road in the morning, she flags down a passing motorist.

She has injured herself badly and can barely talk. The woman relates a story about how her brother was attacked by a bear. She tells Kris that some animals just end up in a frenzy. They aren’t hungry or desperate. They just kill for the sake of killing until they grow tired of it. Somewhat explaining the slasher villain motivation.

The lady stops the car to tend to Kris’ leg wound. Kris is horrendously paranoid. Staring into the woods, expecting to see Johnny. Despite surviving and being the traditional slasher movie “last girl”. Kris is deeply impacted by what she has seen. She will always be looking over her shoulder for Johnny. She will always be traumatised by the events that took place and her life will never be the same.

Thanks for Reading

All right so that is In a Violent Nature’s Ending Explained in less than 1600 words. I know, that’s a bit of an arbitrary number but these articles are tough to compress into bite sized format. 5 minutes isn’t too much to ask of anyone’s time, right?

Obviously a few questions remain. Will there be a sequel? Maybe we will see a prequel. Did Johnny go back to sleep? Will he try and hunt Kris down in the future. This stuff is all ambiguous though I could definitely go for more from this series. There are so many avenues to explore.

As I always say, thanks for spending your time here. Google doesn’t like me much anymore so these articles get way less traction. You can stick around and take a look at some horror movie lists or some more reviews if you like. It’s tough sledding as a small horror content creator so I appreciate every one of you for spending your time on Knockout Horror. It means the world to me as all I want to do is chat horror. Take care and I will, hopefully, see you soon.