It is a well-known fact that you should not bring cameras into the woods or disturbingly community-oriented small island towns. A fact that the audience of Hunting Matthew Nichols (2024) is extraordinarily aware of, as they watch the protagonists forget it. It is in this powerful psychological torture that Hunting Matthew Nichols is one of the most impactful independent films of the past year. Based on a mastery of a film-making tool I find is not commonly used enough, the viewer’s mind. Perhaps for the reason that there may be something slightly sadistic in manipulating the psyche of your customers.
I was only seeing the film at Whistler Film Festival as it had been mentioned by the 3rd AD on my last crew, as she had worked on it. Never could I have imagined I’d be hunting her down later out of frustration because how could she not have warned me! Which, of course, she didn’t. Hunting Matthew Nichols managed a nearly impossible feat in the modern age. Maybe even an ill-advised strategy, keeping the film's true nature a secret until the audience is deeply into it. This was not the mega social media blasted film that was advertised at every corner. It was spread by whispers in between takes amongst crews, “Have you seen Hunting Matthew Nicholls?” “No, What’s it about?” “You’ll have to go see for yourself.” So there I was in the Whistler Village 8 Cinema listening to the jolly looking festival director vaguely introduce the film as a little movie he enjoyed, insisting he wouldn’t spoil anything. Blind to reality, the audience and I only saw a friendly festival director and not the madman at the helm of this haunted mansion pulling the lever to send us trapped for the next 75 minutes in his demented domain.
The film’s avoidant nature is not just in the advertising. It blatantly starts confusing. A documentary-style interview with our lead character as she tells about the disappearance of her brother in their small Vancouver Island town. A quarter into the film, the documentary style is still persisting and I am resisting the urge to look up on my phone if this is a true or fictional story. Clarity only comes when characters start acting weird. It was overacted and it was genius. They were committing to grand unsettling gestures you know are unlikely to be performed by a human grounded in a 2000s North Western reality. So the film must be fictitious and that thought should be settling. But it’s just too unnerving. The overacting is amazing because it borderlines into creepy and the audience truly begins to wonder for the first time in the film if something truly fucked up is going on in this town
True horror is rooted in the belief of something that could be real. You don’t want to believe it could be true, but a part of your brain can’t shake the feeling that it might be. It makes you look at the world around you with a more skeptical eye. The forests of Vancouver Island, where Matthew Nichols goes missing, are expansive and hazardous and old, and dreadfully not everyone who ventures in makes it out. It makes for a very impactful setting with its history and how impossible it is to truly understand its depth. Likewise, the witchcraft element of the film doesn’t satisfy the belief that the movie is entirely fictional. Any person with the slightest inclination towards the paranormal is comforted by the strong belief that ghosts and witchcraft are not rooted in scientific reasoning. Yet they are also strongly fascinated by those gaps in science and unexplained anecdotes that provide opportunity for ghosts and witchcraft to be very real. It’s in this world of the factual and the possible that Hunting Matthew Nichols exists, and as a skeptical person, the uncertainty of it all terrifies me.
This “slowburn mockumentary” doesn’t get to end on a happy, ambiguous note. They make sure to tell you exactly what happened to Matthew through an emotional roller coaster that left me in tears. It’s sad, it’s kind of funny, and then it’s sinister. The movie itself is manipulative as they start adding in little spooks just to get the audience's horror bones going. Then, as you are properly concerned about the level of horror the characters might endure, they offer them a way out. You are trapped as the viewer to be screaming at the screen for everyone to have some sense and quit. Unfortunately, the film has raised such a delicious moral dilemma that you know no matter how much sense of certain doom that faces them, the characters must forge on. I am stuck in this little Whistler theatre so I can’t even scream. I just burrow deeper into my seat and glossettes to get ready for the inevitable nail-biter I am about to face. I had no idea how terrifying and worst of all relentless it would be. As their final messed-up psychological hat trick, the masterminds of this film used the old comedic rule of threes. Subjecting these poor characters to two increasingly gut-wrenching horror shows and subjecting the poor audience to sit in the suspense of the third incident that you know is coming and will be the absolute worst. Covering my eyes to see just through the gaps in my fingers was not enough. By incident number two, I was silently crying and hiccupping in fear. By the third event, I was ready to beg any stranger in the theatre to hold me while I properly freaked out. Bless nobody had a heart attack as the final beat drops and it is ultimately more horrific than anything you would’ve wanted.
I’ll never forget the fear of having to walk back to my parked car in the darkest corner of the forested Whistler lot. I called my sibling in tears as I walked/ ran to my car. When they hung up, I called my mother. I demanded she talk to me as if I were 5 years old again, safe in my twin bed, when she was convincing us there wasn't a man living in our closet. I didn’t feel safe until I was back in the city with every light on in my apartment. It does not take a big budget to leave an impact on an audience. It only requires the ability to mess with your audience's perception of reality. Having done that for me successfully, I can say Hunting Matthew Nichols is an impactful independent film.
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