Killer Origin Story, Motive & Golden Locket Explained

In A Violent Nature introduces a new slasher killer through Johnny, who, like many other villains from the genre, has a tragic origin story and clear motives to go on murder sprees. The horror genre has seen some surprisingly good and successful movies in recent years, most of them original stories. Among them is In A Violent Nature, which took the slasher genre by surprise with its narrative style and very graphic deaths. Written and directed by Chris Nash, In A Violent Nature was a critical success, quickly earning it a sequel.

In A Violent Nature takes the audience to the forest to follow a group of friends who go camping. Some of them find the remains of a fire tower and a golden locket hanging from it, which one of them takes. What they aren’t counting on is that this awakens Johnny, who goes on a murder spree and the group becomes his main target. In A Violent Nature is mostly told through Johnny’s perspective, but it takes the time to explain what happened to Johnny and why he killed so many people.

What Happened To Johnny Before The Events Of In A Violent Nature

Johnny Had A Tragic Death

Unlike most movies, In A Violent Nature doesn’t rely on flashbacks to tell the backstory of Johnny. Instead, Johnny himself takes the audience to where the group is staying and having a campfire. There, one of the friends, Ehren (Sam Roulston), tells them the story of Johnny after they found the locket in the remains of the fire tower. Ehren explains that, seventy years ago, everyone was leased out by a logging company. They set up shops in camps to sell goods to the loggers, but the prices were way too high.

Johnny’s father ran these stores, so he was hated by the loggers, who took all their anger out on young Johnny. Johnny was developmentally delayed, so the angry loggers were quite cruel to him. One day, a drunk logger tripped over one of Johnny’s toy cars and broke his ankle. He was out of work for months and obviously blamed Johnny for what happened to him, so he and the other loggers decided to teach Johnny a lesson. The loggers told Johnny they had found a bag of toys and to meet them at the old fire tower.

Johnny snuck out of the camp and climbed to the top of the tower but there were no toys – instead, Johnny was met by one of the loggers wearing a creepy firefighter mask, ready to scare Johnny. Sadly, he succeeded and Johnny fell from the tower, snapping his neck and dying on the spot. The loggers panicked and put the mask on Johnny to make it look as if he had been playing in the tower, slipped, fell, and had an accidental death. When Johnny’s father found his son’s body, he knew the loggers had something to do with it.

Johnny’s father confronted the loggers and a fight broke out, resulting in the death of Johnny’s father and Johnny’s killer claiming he did it in self-defense. All this was covered up by the logging company so no charges were laid, but a week later, when the company’s executives visited the camp, they found all the loggers dead and their bodies destroyed as if they had been attacked by an animal. Their deaths were ruled as food poisoning and animals in the area ate their bodies – however, one of the policemen said he saw a guy watching in the woods with a mask.

Why Johnny Became A Killer & Who He Was Targeting

Johnny Was On A Revenge Mission

Of course, not everyone was satisfied with the official version of what happened to the loggers and many thought the person responsible was the masked guy, who others were convinced was the vengeful spirit of Johnny – and they were right. A decade later, Johnny returned for another murder spree in which he targeted a group of teenagers. The only survivor was the son of the man who defeated him years earlier, and he anchored his soul once again in the remains of the fire tower.

Johnny’s first murder sprees – those of the loggers and the teenagers – were all out of revenge. The loggers had been cruel to him for no reason (they were angry at his father but took it all out on young Johnny, who had done nothing to them), they provoked his death and didn’t take responsibility for it, instead making it look like an accident. Even worse, they later killed his father and didn’t take responsibility for that either, so Johnny had a double mission: avenge his death and also his father’s.

It’s unknown if Johnny awoke again between the 1980s murder spree and the one in In A Violent Nature, but his motivations for the latter were different from the ones in the previous killings. As mentioned above, one of the friends, Troy (Liam Leone), took the golden locket from the fire tower despite Ehren’s warnings, and that awoke Johnny one more time. What Johnny wanted this time was to get the locket back, but not without taking his anger out on everyone who crossed his path.

In A Violent Nature’s Golden Locket Explained

It All Started With A Stolen Golden Locket

The golden locket is the trigger of the events of In A Violent Nature. There was a reason why there was a golden locket where Johnny was buried, as the locket belonged to his mother. After Johnny awakens and begins to walk through the woods looking for the locket and those who took it, he comes across a house where he sees a necklace resembling the locket. In that scene, there’s a brief flashback shown through a mirror in which Johnny’s father gives him the locket so he knows his parents will always be with him, no matter what.

Later on in the movie, a ranger explains to Colt (Cameron Love) and Kris (Andrea Pavlovic) that the golden locket, which Kris had been wearing after Troy gave it to her, is the only thing that keeps Johnny’s soul at rest. By taking it, they disturbed Johnny’s soul and, of course, he had to return for revenge and to retrieve the locket. Despite this, Kris keeps wearing the locket until she finally takes it off and leaves it hanging from a gas canister while Johnny brutally murders Colt.

What Happened To Johnny In A Violent Nature

Johnny’s Story Isn’t Over Yet

By finally taking the locket off and leaving it in the woods, Kris saves herself as Johnny no longer goes after her, but Johnny’s fate is left unclear. In A Violent Nature shows that the golden locket was no longer on the gas canister where Kris left it, suggesting Johnny found it, took it, and his soul is finally at peace again. However, it’s unknown if Johnny returned to the remains of the fire tower and his grave, if he’s hiding somewhere with the locket, or if he found himself a new resting place in the woods.

In A Violent Nature establishes that the only way for Johnny to be awakened is by taking the golden locket away from him, as he already got his revenge on his and his father’s killers. This leaves the door open for Johnny’s return in the sequel and beyond, and whether there are other ways for him to return or if he’s now bound to wander the woods as he wasn’t exactly put to rest at the end of In A Violent Nature will have to be solved in the sequel.