Ry Barrett Confirms ‘In a Violent Nature 2’ & How a Bear Was His Inspiration For Johnny

While it didn’t break any box office records this year, Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature was definitely a cultural phenomenon. Many called it an arthouse film, others said it was a spiritual cousin to Friday the 13th, a film franchise desperate for a comeback.

In a recent exclusive interview with YouTuber and teenage reporter Jam Man, Ry Barrett, the man who played the masked monster Johnny in the film, confirmed that a sequel is in production. He also let Jam Man in on some behind-the-scenes information. For instance, almost 70% of the original had to be re-shot.

“The team had shot most of the film ahead of time but they had all these issues; weather, accidents, health issues, and stuff like that,” Barrett tells Jam Man in the video. “Literally, they had to shut down and kind of regroup. They did some recasting for some roles and then I was brought back on, or I was brought on, to the film for that and then they kind of used it as a previs (previsualization) for you know, for ideas that they wanted to change things a little bit or focus more on something so they used that as like a learning experience and then kind of amped everything up after that.”

Jam Man then addressed something on the minds of fans: will there be a part two?

“A sequel has been green-lit,” says Barrett. “I’m just sitting back to wait for the script because that’s the first most important part and Nash is working on that right now. So we’re just going to sit back and wait to find out what crazy new shit that he’s going to have everybody doing. So we’re just excited that it’s gonna happen.”

In an interesting bit of off-screen information, when asked about how he came up with Johnny’s predatory style and violent behavior, Barrett says it was inspired by an apex predator.

“I just honestly watched a whole lot of genre films — all the slasher films — and anything that would kind of slightly relate to like the nature aspect of that. Film rituals was a big one. And then I watched a lot of animal attack videos specifically like bear attack videos just because there is an analogy to that, uh, which is not supposed to be a direct analogy, but it just kind of felt right for Johnny because he kind of moves like an animal, and these people kind of enter his territory and he’s very smooth and moves like an animal and then all of a sudden goes into a very vicious kind of switch-over…so I kind of wanted to mimic how animals sort of do that a little bit of a way just to kind of switch.”

He says it’s not how bears attack or maul their victims that inspired him, but, “the movements. like a bear is just walking through the woods and then when you see it attacks something it goes like full on and just the intensity and just the fact that they turn into a killing machine basically when that happens so I just wanted to emulate that.”

Jam Man’s interview contains a lot more informational gems, such as whether Barrett will continue to play Johnny if the franchise continues to grow, and some of his own ideas for future chapters.

Watch the video above and subscribe to Jam Man’s channel for more entertaining horror interviews.