Some years ago, on Halloween night, my friend Becky and I went ghost hunting in the woods. We were horror film veterans; as students, we routinely avoided our university assignments in favour of a late night scare. The decision that saw us stepping into the woods near my house that night was not necessarily a spiritual one. I know that I had some belief that something preternatural existed in the world, but I was unsure that Becky did. It was never something that we discussed, because it never seemed important. Instead, we went into the woods that night in search of that same feeling that kept us up late so many nights over the course of our friendship, the television twinkling in our eyes: fear.
We went into the woods because we wanted to be scared.
It was that night that would not leave my mind when I sat down, this Halloween, to watch Markian Tarasiuk’s Hunting Matthew Nichols (2024). The film follows Tara Nichols, who returns to her home to investigate the disappearance of her brother, Matthew, and his friend Jordan, who ventured into the woods years before and never returned. With a documentary crew, Tara tries to assemble the shards of a mystery that has remained unsolved for more than two decades. What begins as a simple search for answers transforms quickly into something much darker, with the investigation having a profound effect on Tara and the rest of the crew.
In many ways, Hunting Matthew Nichols walks the drag paths of a well worn genre. In fact, The Blair Witch Project (1999) serves not only as inspiration, but also a plot point, as both missing boys were obsessed with the film upon its release. The mockumentary style of Tarasiuk’s film, combined with the found footage delirium of much of the third act make for an expertly controlled and stylish film that thrums not only with the inherent fear that comes with tenebrous expeditions into the woods, but also a deeply personal odyssey for which, it becomes quite clear, will have no happy – nor easy – conclusion.
Miranda MacDougall delivers a fierce performance as Tara, establishing her as a strong protagonist for the story, whose mission to unravel the story of her brother takes a toll that sees the story transfigure from an introspective study of grief into an otherworldly search for answers that the characters try and fail to understand. There are several moments throughout the film where MacDougall’s performance halts your breath, leaving you no choice but to bear witness to the life of a young woman so completely unravelled.
Moreover, the cinematography constantly opts for interesting choices – all of which pay homage to the genre with which the film operates, while also attempting to carve its own path. Rather than relying wholly on the shaky aesthetic of common found footage, the film begins with a sleek, professional documentary style, which slowly bleeds into traditional found footage; an act that shows both the stylish nature of the film, and the devastating effect that Tara’s search for answers has on all the characters. Hunting Matthew Nichols is, in many ways, the love child of The Blair Witch Project and Lake Mungo (2008): a film that deeply understands both the alarming intimacy of found footage and the analytical precision of the documentary style.
The film’s understanding of its genre, however, is also its greatest downfall. Or rather, the film’s choice to subvert the expectations of its genre are its greatest downfall. There are several sequences throughout where tension is very carefully crafted, only to fizzle out in anti-climax. I found this choice quite baffling, and at times frustrating. It was almost like one of those familiar moments in horror, when the final girl opens the fridge door and we watch from beside her, anticipating what she – and we – cannot see: the killer waiting just behind the door, poised to strike the moment the door closes. But when she eventually does close the door, there’s no-one; and we laugh inwardly at how the film took our anxiety and threw it back at us. Much of the moments of anxiety in Hunting Matthew Nichols felt like this, to the point that the consistent teasing of a fearful moment almost undoes any actual fear that the film dares to create.
It was not until almost the end of the film that much of our anxieties arerealised: when Tara and Markian find themselves stalked through the trees by a force that’s haunted much of the narrative, choosing only to materialise at the last moment. The final few minutes are quite undoubtedly terrifying, but in many ways feel unearned, and even out of place. The hellish sequence of events for which the film concludes are preceded by so many moments of stillborn tension that you watch the credits with a feeling of searching for catharsis. That being said, though, horror does not always need to provide catharsis. In fact, most great horror films choose not to. But in doing this, these films also choose to frighten you in other ways, to tell you that in denying you any emotional release by the end that they also understand the expectation they have created. Hunting Matthew Nichols only chooses to commit to actual fear in its final moments, which seems to represent a certain frustration with the film as a whole: the sense that the film has brought us to the very edge of something genuinely quite frightening, only to turn away at the final, pivotal moment, leaving us with nothing.
And yet, what remains of Hunting Matthew Nichols is a film with a particular understanding of the peculiar pull of the woods, of the darkness that exists in the world. I find myself thinking again of Becky and that Halloween night, when we, much like Tara and Matthew, went into the labyrinth of trees in search of fear. We did so with the reassuring knowledge that entering those woods was something we could choose: that we could enter the darkness and return home when we had had enough. We trusted those trees not to betray us.
There is, however, a difference between wanting to be frightened and wanting to know what is frightening you. Becky and I were only interested in the former. Tara, by contrast, cannot leave the question of fear alone. She is desperate to know what happened to her brother, so much so that she risks becoming a victim of the same mystery. It is this distinction that Hunting Matthew Nichols finds its most unsettling idea. We might go into the woods looking for a ghost, safe in the knowledge that we can always go home, but there is no such guarantee for those who go looking for the truth. And sometimes, I suspect, the things we set out to find are not nearly as frightening as what happens when those things find us first.
Hunting Matthew Nichols is streaming on Shudder now.
