Miranda MacDougall in Hunting Matthew Nichols.Supplied
There are several terrifying mysteries posed in the new Canadian horror film Hunting Matthew Nichols.
What happened to a teenage boy after he went missing on Vancouver Island? What supernatural secrets will the boy’s twentysomething sister discover years later? What’s with that creepy cabin she finds in the the woods? You know, Blair Witch-y stuff.
But the scariest question the movie poses is one that its producers are about to find the answer to this weekend: What happens when you self-distribute a low-budget Canadian movie absent any name-brand talent onto more than 1,000 screens in North America?
Made for about $345,000 and shot in B.C., Markian Tarasiuk’s feature directorial debut is taking an unusual route to reach audiences. Typically, independently financed films – that is, films not made under the auspices of a studio – need distributors to sign on during or after the production process, given that distribution companies have pre-existing industry relationships and the necessary infrastructure to get movies into the hands of theatres and various home-entertainment platforms, such as streaming and pay TV. Without distributors attached, films are often four-walled into smaller theatres (a process in which producers essentially rent auditoriums out) and/or punted onto whatever digital platform will take them.
After playing the festival circuit in the fall of 2024, the team behind Hunting Matthew Nichols faced a conundrum familiar to many indie filmmakers.
“We came out into the market, and no one wanted to buy the film, and we couldn’t figure out what to do,” says Sean Harris Oliver, one of the film’s producers, who also co-wrote the script with Tarasiuk.
“By the summer of 2025, we made the choice to take the movie on a travelling road show, and introduced it to theatre companies in the States. We went to Kansas City to meet with AMC. We went to Milwaukee to meet with B&B Theatres. To Knoxville to meet with Regal. And we asked them, ‘Will this movie work in your theatres?’”
The answer was, perhaps surprisingly, a resounding yes – making Hunting Matthew Nichols, by the filmmaking team’s estimate, the first self-distributed, independently financed Canadian film to achieve a wide theatrical release in the United States and Canada in ages. And it is an explicitly made-in-Canada production, too, with the film proudly set on Vancouver Island, and not standing in for some random American locale.
Markian Tarasiuk in Hunting Matthew Nichols.Supplied
“As we were developing the story and getting it out to companies to make it so we didn’t have to do it ourselves, a lot of people said that we should set this in the U.S., so that it will appeal to American audiences,” says Tarasiuk. “But we were just so adamant that it had to be on Vancouver Island. We were living in that area, we knew the history of the island, and it had that spookiness or eeriness to it. It felt real.”
While the self-distribution route is risky, requiring producers to devote the time and resources necessary to mount their own marketing campaign, it is one that is being increasingly adopted in the indie horror space. In January, American director Mark Fischbach, better known by his YouTube moniker Markiplier, self-distributed his debut feature, Iron Lung, on more than 3,000 screens in North America, stunning the industry by earning US$17-million during its opening weekend. (The movie, which cost about US$3-million to make, has now earned almost US$50-million worldwide.)
Still, Fischbach had two key advantages: His film was an adaptation of a video game with brand recognition, and he was able to leverage an audience that he had spent years building, with the director boasting nearly 40 million subscribers on YouTube.
MacDougall and Tarasiuk in Hunting Matthew Nichols.Supplied
Hunting Matthew Nichols, by contrast, is an original concept, and its team’s social-media presence doesn’t approach that of someone like Markiplier.
“Markiplier is a bit of a unicorn in that sense – he represents the YouTube creator who can get their material directly to their audience. I think ours is a more realistic example of what independent filmmakers might actually face if they try to do this system, so for us it’s a different way to quantify success,” says Oliver. “One is obviously what it can do at the box office. But the second is whether we can create a pathway where this can work for independent filmmakers. Can we show other people that this can work if you’re business savvy, if you know your marketing?”
On that front, the team has diversified its marketing efforts, including the creation of an immersive “investigation” website, which expands on the film’s supernaturally-tinged story, boasting a gaming-like experience that the filmmakers say has resulted in an average user playtime of two to six hours. (Its virtual component also recalls the guerilla digital marketing behind the film’s most immediate influence, 1999’s The Blair Witch Project.)
Tarasiuk and MacDougall in Hunting Matthew Nichols.Supplied
“In today’s age where things are incredibly saturated, it’s hard to break through, so we’ve really tried to lean into the immersive aspect of the world and give people something to engage with that’s more than just the film,” says executive producer Jacob Crawford, noting that Tarasiuk spent eight months coding the site. “It helps us build out the world for future films within this franchise, but it also gives audiences something more to feel like they’re connected to the story beyond what’s on screen for 90 minutes.”
But ultimately, the goal is to prove that Canadian indie filmmakers deserve a chance at wide-scale theatrical exposure.
“Canada has the ability to make great content, but I feel like a lot of the industry here thinks very much inside the country, is risk-averse, and not looking at how we can make stuff that can translate globally,” says Tarasiuk. “There’s a huge notion that it’s hard to penetrate the U.S. market, and it absolutely is. But you might as well try. You just have to take swings.”
Hunting Matthew Nichols opens across Canada on April 10.