Joanna Whicker in A Savage Nature (2020)

A lonely waitress is desperate to escape her small town and repair her marriage to her deputy sheriff husband. On the evening of their wedding anniversary, the troubled couple attempts to make a fresh start, but things take an unexpected turn when sinister strangers invade their home. As the night unfolds, loyalties shift, secrets spill, and lives shatter.

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.

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