Review: ‘Hunting Matthew Nichols’ Reinvigorates the Found Footage Subgenre
In the late aughts, found footage horror was everywhere. Strange as it seems, it wasn’t The Blair Witch Project that incited a huge shift in horror’s raison d’être, but Paranormal Activity. Oren Peli’s unprecedented success not only gave rise to a gargantuan franchise of its own but also encouraged the horror genre to broadly emulate what made that low-budget shocker so successful. We had The Devil Inside, As Above, So Below, The Gallows, The Visit, and innumerable more on the VOD front. Filmmaker Markian Tarasiuk is longing for that era in horror, and his debut, Hunting Matthew Nichols, feels like the kind of movie you’d see in a hot theater in the dead of summer back in 2013. I mean that in the most complimentary sense.
In a meta-twist, Markian Tarasiuk stars as himself alongside Miranda MacDougall. MacDougall plays Tara, a young woman who recruits Tarasiuk for his filmmaking prowess to document her search for her missing brother, the titular Matthew Nichols (James Ross). Matthew and his friend went missing two decades before, basically vanishing without a trace over the course of one mysterious Halloween night.
Hunting Matthew Nichols’s first strength (among many) is its technically proficient verisimilitude. Horror mockumentaries all adhere to the same cadence, and this one’s no different. Yes, the most serious scares are reserved for the final 10 minutes, and everything that comes before is a slow-burn of new evidence and ooky-spooky findings. So, there are a lot of cuts to other talking heads—detectives, anthropologists, and even reporters—remarking on the disappearance. And it looks… great?
If you’d told me the early goings were culled from a real HBO or Netflix true crime documentary, I’d believe you. Small as it seems, the immersion is immediate, and alongside Tarasiuk’s self-inclusion, it wonderfully augments the illusion that what we’re watching is real. Artifice is the enemy of found footage, and Hunting Matthew Nichols gloriously basks in an atmosphere that remarkably resembles reality.
So much so, in fact, the aforementioned The Blair Witch Project isn’t just an inspiration, but an earnest plot point. I won’t say too much, but Matthew was certifiably obsessed with the film, and his involvement in the Burkittsville fandom has direct links to his own disappearance. It’s 10:00 PM, do you know where your kids are (probably watching The Blair Witch Project).
Tarasiuk has a real knack for this kind of stuff. Beyond getting solid performances from his troupe across the board, his scares wisely eschew homage. Yes, the enduring history of horror mockumentaries contextualizes the entire film, but Tarasiuk has some tricks of his own. It’s never just Noroi-lite (whose fans will get a real kick out of this one’s finale). Tarasiuk uses the depths of found footage to engender scares that feel uniquely his.
Hunting Matthew Nichols is the sleeper horror hit of the year. It’s scary. It’s nostalgic. It’s made with profound love and attention to detail. It’s gonna take you all the way back to 2007 in the best possible way. Join the hunt – you won’t regret it.
Hunting Matthew Nichols releases in theaters nationwide on April 10.
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Hunting Matthew Nichols
Summary
Hunting Matthew Nichols is a terrifying love letter to the early-oughts found-footage horror craze. It’s seriously scary.