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How does one go from starring in Hallmark movies and TV shows to directing and writing a found-footage horror film? 

“Yeah, it’s a very clear departure,” laughs Markian Tarasiuk over a video call. But, as Tarasiuk argues, it’s also something of a reality of life as an actor in Vancouver. After all, he’s recently starred in romcom fare like Return to Sender and Polar Opposites. 

“I’m very much from the Hallmark world, because that’s what Vancouver offers to actors,” he says. “There’s just so much Hallmark here. So we have such a community. But then, what’s our indie scene? It’s very tiny. Even though we’re a huge town of film, our independent film scene in the city is tiny because there’s this idea that we’re a service town and crews are constantly on to, like, big things, so the little stuff doesn’t really get made here.”

Tarasiuk had been wanting to change that for some time. So, he and fellow Studio 58 grad Sean Harris Oliver wrote a script for a paranormal horror movie that mirrored the style of a Netflix true crime documentary called Hunting Matthew Nichols and pitched it around town to studios and production companies. “I’ll call them out—everybody in the city passed,” he says.

But the pair hit a stroke of luck when the WGA and SAG strikes started. “We looked at each other and said, ‘This is the time, because we can get incredible people who aren’t working right now to make this movie with us,” says Tarasiuk.

The film follows Tara (Miranda MacDougall, a series regular on Hallmark heavy hitter When Calls the Heart) and her push to investigate the 20-year-old disappearance of her brother and his friend on Vancouver Island. It was made in B.C. with all local actors and hit a theatrical release across the country on Friday last week. 

The film will be playing in independent theatres across the country, including the Park Theatre in Vancouver, but it also managed to get into around 40 Cineplexes in Canada and 10 Landmark theatres. “We were not expecting that from Cineplex,” says Tarasiuk. “They were very, very kind, and we were surprised. Maybe they believe in the movie, or maybe we’ve called them out in the press for not supporting Canadian film before, and they listened, but now we just want to make them proud.”

Tarasiuk was born in Winnipeg but has lived in Vancouver for most of his adult life. He was always intent on setting the film on Vancouver Island. “It was important to me—if you look up the missing person statistics on the Island, they’re pretty shocking. We put a stat at the start of the movie that it’s almost two times the national average, which is true. It’s inherently a spooky place.” 

Of course, when talking to U.S. producers, the topic of calling it something else inevitably came up. “People were asking us, ‘Can we set it in Seattle? Can we put it somewhere in the States like Washington or Oregon?’ And we fought back and said, ‘No, the Island is the movie and the movie is the Island for this one,’” says Tarasiuk. “I don’t know where this idea is coming from that we have to switch locales in order to make things more accessible for American audiences. They haven’t cared; no one’s cared. I’m glad we stuck to our guns.”

Tarasiuk and company did premiere the film in the U.S. at the Newport Beach Film Festival, and is working on a wider U.S. release. They have at least one prominent American film voice in the bag, as famed director Steven Soderbergh endorsed the film, calling it “a sneaky, simmering take on the true crime folk horror genre that boils over and becomes truly unnerving.”

“I was blown away that he watched it and said what he said,” says Tarasiuk. “There have been a lot of surreal moments with this, and that’s definitely one of them.”

Hunting Matthew Nichols is playing now in theatres across B.C.

Video of Hunting Matthew Nichols (2026) Official Trailer | A Found Footage Theatrical Experience