Hunting Matthew Nichols (2026)
Directed by: Markian Tarasiuk
Premise: A pseudo-documentary in which a woman (Miranda MacDougall) investigates the disappearance of her brother and his friend (James Ross and Issiah Bullbear) who vanished while researching a local legend in the nearby woods.
What Works: The key to making a successful pseudo-documentary is creating the illusion of authenticity. A lot of films in the found footage format do that by including (or creating) the rough edges of raw footage. Hunting Matthew Nichools simulates reality by creating what feels like a finished documentary. This approach allows the film to have a more polished look than we usually get in found footage movies. It also allows the filmmakers to include elements of feature filmmaking like editing and coverage and asynchronous audio without spoiling the illusion. Hunting Matthew Nichols also feels real due to its naturalistic performances. The cast includes mostly unfamiliar actors and everyone is well cast especially Miranda MacDougall as Tara Nichols. The investigation is personal with Tara searching for the truth about her long-lost brother Matthew and his friend Jordan. The weight of the family’s grief hovers over the movie. As Tara gets deeper into the material her fellow filmmakers get increasingly concerned. Markian Tarasiuk and Ryan Alexander McDonald play fictionalized versions of themselves as the documentary director and cameraman. They are convincing as filmmakers increasingly rattled by what they find and by Tara’s singlemindedness. Hunting Matthew Nichols was shot in winter at Vancouver Island and it uses the local environs to create a specific sense of place and the wet and gloomy climate aids the atmosphere. Hunting Matthew Nichols is very scary in a way that grows organically over the course of the picture. The last third of the film is very effective.
What Doesn’t: What’s strangely absent from this pseudo-documentary investigation into the disappearance of Matthew and Jordan is the boys themselves. We never really get to know what kind of people Matthew and Jordan were despite the fact that the film is made by their family. The film never really addresses what Matthew and Jordan were doing in the forest in the first place. They may have been motivated by curiosity or they may have been doing something more sinister. The filmmakers evade that question. Hunting Matthew Nichols owes a lot to The Blair Witch Project. The filmmakers are upfront about that; it’s revealed that Matthew and Jordan loved that film. But the second half of Hunting Matthew Nichols borrows heavily from The Blair Witch Project, recreating key images from that film.
Bottom Line: Hunting Matthew Nichols is frightening and well produced. It borrows a lot from The Blair Witch Project but this is one of the scariest and most effective pseudo-documentary horror pictures of recent years.
Episode: #1094 (April 10, 2026)