{"id":4522,"date":"2026-04-14T12:41:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/4522\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T12:41:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:41:31","slug":"hunting-matthew-nichols-director-markian-tarasiuk-finds-the-value-in-local-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/4522\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunting Matthew Nichols director Markian Tarasiuk finds the value in local film"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it\u2019s a very clear departure,\u201d laughs Markian Tarasiuk over a video call. But, as Tarasiuk argues, it\u2019s also something of a reality of life as an actor in Vancouver. After all, he\u2019s recently starred in romcom fare like Return to Sender and Polar Opposites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very much from the Hallmark world, because that\u2019s what Vancouver offers to actors,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s just so much Hallmark here. So we have such a community. But then, what\u2019s our indie scene? It\u2019s very tiny. Even though we\u2019re a huge town of film, our independent film scene in the city is tiny because there\u2019s this idea that we\u2019re a service town and crews are constantly on to, like, big things, so the little stuff doesn\u2019t really get made here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarasiuk had been wanting to change that for some time. So, he and fellow Studio 58 grad\u00a0Sean 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. \u201cI\u2019ll call them out\u2014everybody in the city passed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

But the pair hit a stroke of luck when the WGA and SAG strikes started. \u201cWe looked at each other and said, \u2018This is the time, because we can get incredible people who aren\u2019t working right now to make this movie with us,\u201d says Tarasiuk.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. \u201cWe were not expecting that from Cineplex,\u201d says Tarasiuk. \u201cThey were very, very kind, and we were surprised. Maybe they believe in the movie, or maybe we\u2019ve called them out in the press for not supporting Canadian film before, and they listened, but now we just want to make them proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

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. \u201cIt was important to me\u2014if you look up the missing person statistics on the Island, they\u2019re pretty shocking. We put a stat at the start of the movie that it\u2019s almost two times the national average, which is true. It\u2019s inherently a spooky place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, when talking to U.S. producers, the topic of calling it something else inevitably came up. \u201cPeople were asking us, \u2018Can we set it in Seattle? Can we put it somewhere in the States like Washington or Oregon?\u2019 And we fought back and said, \u2018No, the Island is the movie and the movie is the Island for this one,\u2019\u201d says Tarasiuk. \u201cI don\u2019t 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\u2019t cared; no one\u2019s cared. I\u2019m glad we stuck to our guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was blown away that he watched it and said what he said,\u201d says Tarasiuk. \u201cThere have been a lot of surreal moments with this, and that\u2019s definitely one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunting Matthew Nichols is playing now in theatres across B.C.<\/p>\n

Video of Hunting Matthew Nichols (2026) Official Trailer | A Found Footage Theatrical Experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter. How…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[415,17,412,413,418,407,414,420,416,423,226,389,419,422,421,417,95],"class_list":{"0":"post-4522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-city","11":"tag-culture","12":"tag-dining","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-events","15":"tag-fashion","16":"tag-film","17":"tag-food","18":"tag-lifestyle","19":"tag-music","20":"tag-nightlife","21":"tag-restaurants","22":"tag-shopping","23":"tag-tv","24":"tag-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}