HUNTING MATTHEW NICHOLS

Hunting Matthew Nichols conjures up a terrifying nightmare experience as Canadian filmmaker Markian Tarasiuk makes an electrifying feature film directorial debut that not only genuinely blends documentarian filmmaking and found footage horror to create a disturbing mystery, but with a masterful technical control in the way that the story unfolds, results in an unforgettable horror film that will have your heart racing in its frightening final act!

Over the last year, there has been a renaissance in the Canadian independent horror genre, with films like Dream Eater and undertone helping to deliver some of the biggest scares in recent memory on incredibly small budgets thanks to their genius craft and ideas of the filmmaking team. And joining their ranks is Markian Tarasiuk’s Hunting Matthew Nichols, which brilliantly blends found footage and documentary filmmaking to tell a fictional story that feels unnaturally real. Using the true crime documentary genre as a starting point and developing a supernatural mystery that calls back to The Blair Witch Project, with a similar marketing campaign that plays into creating a spectacle that has audiences believing this is a real life story, Tarasiuk is able to weaponize the moody atmosphere of the film against viewers to create true terror as the chilling truths are revealed about the disappearance of Matthew Nichols and his friend Jordan Reimer. This allows Tarasiuk’s feature film directorial debut to not only become an unsettling and heart pounding horror experience that marks an exciting new debut of a new voice within the horror genre (alongside Sean Harris Oliver who developed the story with Tarasiuk), but another exceptional Canadian independent horror film that will scare viewers to death.

An unsolved disappearance of two teenage boys with no plausible explanation of what happened to them, a family member’s desperate search for answers years later, and new revelations that teases a far more sinister explanation to the disappearance, the ingredients to the plot of Hunting Matthew Nichols feel familiar. Though, it is the way that the story is framed by Tarasiuk and Oliver, who present Tara Nichols’ search for answers through a documentary film she is making and interviews with individuals involved with the investigation into her brother’s disappearance, that gives the film a fresh feeling that immediately draws audiences into its central mystery. With Tarasiuk and camera operator Ryan Alexander McDonald playing fictionalized versions of themself, the documentary storytelling helps to build the “realistic” element of the story that the film’s marketing campaign is capitalizing on. This allows the true crime approach to the mystery to develop a true experience for viewers, not merely an entertainment break from reality, that instantly communicates the idea that something is not right about the facts being presented to them by the authorities that investigated the disappearance of Matthew Nicholas and Jordan Reimer decades earlier.

Playing heavily into the documentary portrayal of the story in the first act, the storytelling perspective naturally shifts into found footage of Tara and Markian as behind the scenes footage of their investigation takes over in the film’s second and third act. This shift begins as Tara discovers a new piece of evidence that was previously admitted from the official reports surrounding her brother’s disappearance, giving new life to the investigation and allows the audience to feel like they are present in real time as the search for Matthew intensifies. As the new found evidence points the investigation in a new direction, one with a more sinister explanation, the horror elements are naturally developed to build tension and deepen the mystery as the story builds to its final act.

The tonal shift from documentary to horror is aided by visual choices of the film’s presentation. Vancouver Island’s natural gloominess in the winter, covered in fog, rain and cloud cover gives the film a natural yet haunting beauty, building a foreboding environment for the story to unfold in that feels like that nature is working against Tara and Markian; while the chilling musical score from Jeff Griffiths and Christopher King is incredibly effective and is enough on its own to make the hairs on the back of the audiences’ neck to stick up. On top of this, the shifting cinematography choices between a polished digital look for the documentary segments, old school VHS feeling footage for the footage from the night that Matthew and Jordan disappeared two decades prior, and the shakier camera footage for the found footage moments informs each moment of the film and gives a sense of urgency and realism to the developing paranoia within the audience. But most effectively, it is the editing choice that purposefully hides the exact details of that new piece of information, instead focusing on Tara and Markian’s reaction to the footage they have uncovered and their discussions of what they saw on that tape, which generates an immense sense of dread and terror within viewers as the omission of this footage signifies the gravity of the circumstances of Matthew and Jordan’s last documented moments.

Even with any true horror fan knowing the direction that the film is heading, constantly building towards the fateful night that Tara and Markian will find themselves in the woods outside Port Rupert looking for the location that Matthew and Jordan went missing, nothing can prepare them for what unfolds. Taking the best use of the found footage aspect of the film, using the footage that Markian is shooting for their documentary and shaky camera footage as Markian follows Tara into the woods, quick editing and splicing together historical footage found on Matthew and Jordan’s camera, visually the final act is firing on all cylinders to create a horrifying atmosphere. Narratively, what unfolds is beyond disturbing, answering many of the audiences’ questions about what happened to Matthew and Jordan twenty-three years earlier, as well as posing new questions based on what Tara and Markian experience, helping to keep the unexplainable mystery that Tarasiuk and Oliver have developed the entire film alive. As the concluding moments of the story explode across the screen with an unbridled chaos under careful direction of Tarasiuk, every shocking and unnerving moment is intentionally orchestrated to elevate viewers’ heartbeats and deliver a horrifying vision that is certain to have screams erupting in theatres. It is what any great horror movie strives to do, and not only does Tarasiuk do that effectively, he does it with such an incredible eye that it helps to deliver an ending that will haunt audiences long after the credits have stopped rolling.

Creating the emotional stakes for the story is Miranda MacDougall as Tara Nichols. In every scene, MacDougall creates the suffering within Tara that conveys her desperate search for answers about her brother’s disappearance. What starts off as a search for closure becomes a self-harming endeavour in which the pain that MacDougall brings to Tara through her performance not only bonds the audience to the story, but helps to elevate the film’s final act due to the audience’s personal stakes in Tara’s search for the truth. Christine Willes is commanding as Pam Hamilton, the lead investigator in Matthew’s disappearance, bringing compassion as she tries to help Tara find the closure she so desperately seeks, but also an unsettling demeanor that hints at the truth that Pam is helping to suppress about the case. Tarasiuk does a great job as a fictionalized version of himself, acting as the story’s voice of reason as he tries to rationalize the new developments in the case and safeguard Tara’s health with a natural warmth that helps to calm the audience’s mounting paranoia about what is unfolding on screen. It's a distinct contrast to everything else happening in the film, but Tarasiuk plays it perfectly to ensure that he naturally blends in with every element of the film, before delivering a truly legendary scream king performance in the film’s final moments that is certain to generate lots of panic and screaming amongst viewers.

While many horror lovers hold The Blair Witch Project in high regard, as do the two characters in this film who disappear, there is no question that Markian Tarasiuk has crafted a far superior horror film that has earned itself a rightful place amongst the greatest Canadian horror films of the twenty-first century. Heightening the found footage aspect of the storytelling with the true crime documentary introduction to the case at the centre of the film’s story, Markian Tarasiuk and Sean Harris Oliver build paranoia and despair within viewers with each reveal in Hunting Matthew Nichols, spinning an addictive mystery that grips viewers immediately and will leave them speechless with its nightmare inducing conclusion. By weaponizing the dreadful atmosphere of the film against audiences, Markian Tarasiuk makes a glorious debut with Hunting Matthew Nichols that not only showcases the power of found footage storytelling done right, but with the emotional desperation of Miranda MacDougall’s brilliant lead performance, ensures that by the time the true terrors of the mystery are revealed there is no way for audiences not to be scared to death!