On Halloween night in 2001, two teenage boys with a camcorder and an obsession with The Blair Witch Project walked into the forest on Vancouver Island and never came out. Police found the camera in an abandoned cabin. They never found the boys.
Twenty-two years later, Matthew’s younger sister Tara decides to make a documentary about what happened. That is the clever, self-aware hook of Hunting Matthew Nichols, the Canadian found-footage horror that arrives on Shudder on Halloween itself. It is convincing, patient and properly creepy at the end. Getting there takes a while.
Hunting Matthew Nichols looks so much like a real true-crime documentary that, when the woods finally close in, you almost forget it isn’t one.
Movie at a Glance
- UK availability: Streaming exclusively on Shudder from Saturday 31 October 2026
- US availability: Streaming on Shudder from 31 October 2026 (rated R), after a North American cinema release earlier this year
- Director: Markian Tarasiuk
- Writer: Sean Harris Oliver, from a story by Markian Tarasiuk and Sean Harris Oliver
- Starring: Miranda MacDougall, Markian Tarasiuk and Ryan Alexander McDonald
- Runtime: 89 minutes
- Genre: Found-footage mockumentary horror
Viewer Match
- Best for: Fans of The Blair Witch Project, true-crime documentaries and slow-burn folk horror.
- Maybe skip if: Shaky cameras and characters shouting at each other in the dark drive you up the wall.
- Mood and pace: Quiet and investigative for an hour, then tense and frightening.
- Cinema or streaming? Made for a late-night Shudder watch with the lights off.
- Spoiler level: Spoiler-free: we never say what is waiting in the woods.
A Documentary About a Horror Film Obsession
Tarasiuk, a Canadian actor making his debut as a feature director, plays himself as the filmmaker Tara hires to document her search, with Ryan Alexander McDonald, also playing himself, behind the camera. It is a neat meta touch, and so is the way the film puts Blair Witch right into the story: the missing boys were superfans trying to make their own version, and the film we are watching knows exactly how many imitators came after it.
The first hour is built like a streaming true-crime series, and it is very good at it. Grainy news reports, home videos and talking-head interviews with a mother, a detective, a former mayor and a local anthropologist all feel uncannily real. Old rumours resurface, some of them ugly, including suspicion that fell on the family of Matthew’s Indigenous best friend for no good reason, and there is a spooky local legend about a nineteenth-century religious commune. When Tara gets her hands on the original evidence box, the mystery really starts to grip.
The Long Walk to the Woods
The catch is that the film keeps its characters out of the forest for almost all of that first hour, so the scares are held back for a very long time. In the meantime, Miranda MacDougall’s Tara grows more and more desperate, and while the performance is committed, it is pitched so high, so early, that it becomes more tiring than moving. Her two companions get little to work with beyond nervous arguments, and the boys themselves, seen only in old tapes, stay frustratingly out of focus.
The illusion also slips now and then. Justin Sebastian’s photography is sometimes too beautiful for a scrappy documentary, and the score by Jeff Griffiths and Christopher King occasionally tells you to be scared before the film has earned it.
A Finale Worth Waiting For
When the trio finally head into the trees, though, the film changes gear. Tarasiuk builds the last stretch with real control, using darkness, distance and things half-seen at the edge of the frame rather than cheap jump scares, and the final minutes deliver some genuinely nasty, memorable images. Fans of the cult Japanese mockumentary Noroi: The Curse will spot a few nods. It doesn’t quite make up for the slow road there, but it sends you to bed uneasy, which is exactly the point.
Spoiler-Free Verdict
Hunting Matthew Nichols is a smart, convincing found-footage horror with a superb mock-documentary style and a strong final act, held back by a sluggish first hour and an exhausting central performance.
- Performances: 6/10
- Direction: 7/10
- Screenplay: 5.5/10
- Score: 6/10
- Cinematography: 7/10
- Entertainment Value: 6/10
- Overall score: 6.5/10
Star rating: 3/5
Verdict badge: Stream It
One-line verdict: Stick with the slow start: the woods are worth the wait on Halloween night.
Watch the Official Trailer
Join Tara’s search in the official trailer.
Want more frights for the night? Our Halloween horror guide has plenty more to choose from.
Would you have gone into the woods with Tara, or stayed by the car? Share your spoiler-free reaction to Hunting Matthew Nichols.