A Savage Nature opens with a focus on interesting characters and the dejected situations they live in. We meet Beth Walker (Joanna Whicker) as she sits in the break room of the diner she works at, wistfully looking through a travel brochure advertising scenic beaches and perfect weather. Through a conversation with her pregnant co-worker, Ally (Rayanne Gonzales), we learn that life isn’t exactly where she imagined it would be.

Beth is the former prom queen who married Pete (Steve Polites), the hometown war hero turned police officer. Their big dreams never materialized and now Beth is desperately searching for a way out of her small Virginia town while trying to put the spark back into the marriage. The viewer learns all this in an elegant, well-acted, and well-written scene early in the story–one that immediately endears the audience to Beth and her personal struggles. 

The difficult task of navigating this small town life is immediately on display when she returns from her break only to be harassed by two unsavory looking patrons, Doug (Jon Hudson Odom) and J.B. (Joseph Carlson).  Beth handles herself well, as it’s apparent she may have been down this road with other customers before. Eventually, Sheriff Walter (Frank Riley III) steps in to diffuse the situation. Of course, it isn’t the last we’ll see of Doug and J.B., later on they’re the ones who will terrorize Beth and Pete in their home. 

The best achievements in A Savage Nature come mostly before the invasion itself, as director/writer Paul Awad and co-writer Kathryn O’Sulivan craft an interestingly fractured relationship between Beth and Pete. It’s not only in the interactions between husband and wife, but also the quiet moments. Beth comes home from work and goes through the motions, sneaks a cigarette from her secret stash, then eventually prepares a special anniversary dinner. It’s a well conceived sequence that truly conveys the isolation Beth lives in every day. When Pete gets home, their interactions with one another are affectionate, but tentative. They seemingly still care for one another, but they are both searching for something that is still missing, something neither may be able to fully verbalize. Again, Whicker and Polites do excellent work here projecting the uncertainty of their situation. 

When the bad guys do eventually show up at the Walker home, the quiet character study is abandoned for what you would normally expect of the home invasion narrative. Over the course of the night, there are battles for guns and shifting advantages and blood spilled. Odom and Carlson as Doug and J.B. are sufficiently menacing as the two criminals, but what undoes the second half of A Savage Nature are the narrative choices made. Whatever goodwill builds up in the first half is quickly undone by confusing writing decisions that often stretch credibility and are hard to believe, despite the suspension of disbelief. It’s difficult to watch characters you once really liked performing actions that leave you feeling frustrated. 

While there is some excellent writing and direction early on, it’s hard to overlook the choices made in the later acts of A Savage Nature. Unfortunately, what starts as an interesting study in quiet desperation and loneliness eventually succumbs to melodrama. 

5 out of 10