Directed By Markian Tarasiuk

Starring – Miranda MacDougall, Markian Tarasiuk, Christine Willes

The Plot – Twenty-three years after her brother, Matthew (James Ross) mysteriously disappeared, Tara (MacDougall), a documentary filmmaker, sets out to solve his missing person’s case. But when a disturbing piece of evidence is revealed, she comes to believe that her brother might still be alive.

Rated R for adult language and some violent content/bloody images

Hunting Matthew Nichols | Official Trailer

POSITIVES

If that aforementioned plot brought back distinct visions of last year’s Shelby Oaks, it’s because the two films share a lot of similarities in their structural outlines, despite Hunting Matthew Nichols being free from blame since being on the finished shelf since 2023, and while it’s full of many of the same inferiorities that plagued its predecessor, there are some noteworthy aspects here that at least kept me faithfully invested throughout its 85-minute runtime, inside of a slowburn consistency that doesn’t always ride the waves of momentum with its storytelling. For starters, the film effectively musters the never-ending nightmare of unresolve for families seeking closure, particularly as a means of motivation for Tara that forces her down some dark and dangerous avenues to satisfy her own restless curiosity. While Tarasiuk’s direction limits what MacDougall is able to enact emotionally within the confines of this achingly haunted woman clinging to answers, it does meticulously articulate the evaporation of this air of defining familiarity within the character that eventually grows to turn her into the worst version of herself, lacking selflessly empathetic and responsible actions to keep her crew safe, but beyond that coherently illustrates this unshakeable grip that time has played by making the 22 years that has passed easier on her, where the unearthed knowledge surrounding her brother and his activities has her fighting for someone she barely even recognizes, an aspect that we experience in her throughout the film’s expansion. The film also terrifically embodies the mockumentary style captivity that it was going for with its presentation, with everything from handheld photography, to an abundance of speaking guests, to corresponding visuals conveying the kind of mystery documentary that could easily be placed among Netflix’s seemingly weekly stretch of serial killer releases. This is the single most compelling aspect of the movie for me, as the backstory and lore utilizes many fascinating components to this disappearance that inspires speculation to the interpretation of the audience, without anything feeling cheap or unnaturally enacted to the immersion of its device, a fact made all the more engrossing by Jeff Griffiths and Christopher King’s somberly scintillating score, full of underlining themes that work terrifically alongside the big reveals from so many of the movie’s speaking guests, conjuring that ominously gloomy essence that tonally crafts uncertainty to the solidification of the atmosphere, in ways that make you wonder just what kind of genre that Tarasiuk’s direction is catering towards. Tarasiuk himself also makes some fascinating decisions with the presentation within the movie that helps to blur the line between art and real-life, not only with his on-screen character donning his real-life name, in order to unearth a found footage aspect to the enrichment, but also Tara Nichols name listed on the opening credits as a producer to the movie, and it’s just two of the many fascinating touches that Tarasiuk made to make his established world flourish with legitimacy, maintaining faithfulness to the capture in ways that effortlessly prove his immense studying towards properly fleshing out the subgenre. Beyond all of this, the performance of MacDougall effectively succeeds at rendering the mental duress of her character, despite a limitation of opportunities within the screenplay, with her single greatest strength being her intuitive responses to things she’s seeing that the audience aren’t privy to, such as one scene involving her watching the ninth and previously undocumented tape of her brother’s recordings that render a disturbingly gruesome element to his final night in question. There’s an element to Miranda’s work that occasionally feels like a child in a woman’s body, as an unfortunate aspect of her character’s inability to grow when time stood still, and considering the film marks MacDougall’s feature length debut to acting, it not only helps her to disappear into the confines of the character, without anything entailing concentration-breaks to seeing a previously established actress portray a supposedly real-life person, but also allows her to make a noteworthy debut with the tenderness of her portrayal, a feat that requires her roughly 90% of the movie’s focus squarely on her shoulders.

NEGATIVES

Unfortunately, while many of the same conflicts that I experienced with Shelby Oaks does persist in Tarasiuk’s film, it’s the additional unpleasantries that are most defining to its lasting imprint in connecting to an audience, beginning with a derivatively unoriginal screenplay and thinly developed screenplay that will undoubtedly test the patience of audiences seeking an alluring hook within the opening half hour of the movie. Slowburn storytelling has never been a problem for me, if done compellingly, but there comes a point when the mockumentary kind of captivity evidentially feels like it has told everything from the backstory of the narrative within the first forty minutes of the engagement, and considering the rest of it feels directly plucked from The Blair Witch Project, with mentions of the movie, and even recreations of familiar sequences, it feels like Tarasiuk steered a little close to the sun with his inspiration, and as a result, his movie never finds the ambition to deviate refreshingly from homaging its predecessor, instead building the entirety of his first two acts to an unscary and underwhelming climax that adopts supernaturality to a story cloaked in humanity. While I commend Tarasiuk and co-writer Sean Harris Oliver for leveling a blow-off that legitimately cements answers to the established conflict, it’s obviously hindered by shaking-camera documentation and a limitation of visuals that further pad the pay-off, leading to the eventual credits scroll that will inevitably leave audiences groaning in frustration for a movie that flew off the rails of redundancy so quickly. In addition to this, the film can’t even remain true to the depths of its mockumentary angle of storytelling, falling by the wayside of many predecessors before it, where the characters never find a necessary reason to leave the camera running that feels logical and seamlessly believable. Sometimes it pertains to moments where characters are sleeping, then decide first-thing to reach for the camera after being startled by mysterious knocking at their hotel room, while others Tarasiuk leaves the camera running in the backseat of the car, while the characters are outside talking in front of it, and though the photography attains a pretty unique transition from the latter, it doesn’t seem remotely feasible that the filmmakers inside of this world would waste considerable footage and battery to document so many unimportant conversations, requiring a grave suspension of disbelief that immediately implements concentration-breaking intrusion to the gimmick, as quickly as the opening twenty minutes. Speaking of those conversations, they’re articulated by the kind of braindead long-winded exposition that eviscerates any semblance of nuance or naturality to these character designs, with such an obvious brand of foreshadowing that immediately constructs a red flag of reminder for the film’s inevitable inclusion. This aspect would be somewhat forgiving if the answers from guests didn’t feel so rushed and conflict-free to their memorability, especially considering all of them tell stories crystal clear despite twenty-three years has passed in the timeline of the film, but their dialogue feels like bullet points of bewilderment, in ways that make the police force in this setting feel like morons of the most incredible degree, and to what would be the single most alienating element of this movie, if Tara Nichols wasn’t the main character who we’re unfortunately forced to be saddled with. This might directly contradict my deserved praise of MacDougall in the protagonist performance, but Tara is downright insufferable to spend such an ample amount of time with, especially the understandable-but-obnoxious abrasiveness of her treatment of others who are determined to help her in the answers she seeks, or the ways she over-dramatically confronts each of them approaching things logically, and considering this is the intended shoulder that so much of the movie’s emotionality and empathy rests heavily upon, I never found myself fully engaged in her quest for peaceful resolution, leaving an already difficultly deliberately paced story stalled by a complete lack of sentimental pull that flounders any semblance of vulnerability within her character.

OVERALL
Hunting Matthew Nichols is an admirably ambitious attempt at effectively rendering the kind of true crime documentaries that resonate endearingly with internet detectives everywhere, but its speculative search stalls in the depths of a nagging narrative that runs out of steam midway through the movie, before sluggishly persisting along to a derivatively familiar and underwhelming climax brisking Blair Witch territory. Despite an engaging angle that constructs a compelling mystery, the expansion of the movie’s investigation lacks the conductive momentum to magnetize an audience for even 85 minutes of screentime, proving that secrets should just stay buried, both on-screen and off.

My Grade: 5.2 or D+