Sean Parker
At the prehistoric dawn of the internet era, back in the days of AOL dial-up, burned CDs, and independent film renaissance, Artisan films took a chance on a longshot title with no-name actors shooting on a handheld camera. The Blair Witch Project cost an eerily low $35,000 to produce, but an aggressive and strategic marketing campaign utilizing the low res 56k glory of the information superhighway added an additional $200 to $500 thousand to the price tag on a gambit that college kids would fill seats to see the world’s first documentary of paranormal horrors. Just as Ruggero Deodato had done when his similarly styled film Cannibal Holocaust was developed, The Blair Witch Project filmmakers disappeared themselves, leaving the media asking and the public wondering, “Is this real?” and inciting an unnecessary panic that would have had William Castle cheering in his grave.
The spirit of The Blair Witch Project’s marketing genius is alive and well with Project MKHEXE, a conspiracy theory exploring found footage film about the death of Sean Wilson (Will Jandro) by his grief-stricken brother Tim (Ignacyo Matynia) after Sean finds evidence of a hidden government experiment. Though the film is new, it clearly states that this footage was uploaded to the internet in 2014, adding urban legend lore where, should the occasional person stumble upon it, they will never be heard from again in the days following. To make it more effective, you can’t simply find a cast of characters list on IMDB or Letterboxd either (at least at the time of writing this in early April), and plugging Project MKHEXE into Google only pulls up a single result: the film’s brilliant lo-fi webpage outlining the film and forwarding the mystery behind Project MKHEXE.
Dropping the film on Screambox without currently having an active trailer viewable on YouTube is another way writer-director Gerald Robert Waddell and his creative team have set up a thought-provoking look at the nature of conspiracy theories, how they propagate, twist, and become those haunting urban legends from the next town over we all heard in the days before the internet. Strongly hoping an underground word-of-mouth movement pays off, Project MKHEXE contends to spark a similar flair of conspiratorial prowess. Everything about the film is mired in secrecy. Even trying to find cast and crew names only proves my hardcore research skills (that and Apple TV kind of sold them out, which is where I also found a trailer for the film).
Plus, the movie has the markings of a limited-time offer, a suspicious feeling that if you don’t catch it quickly, Project MKHEXE may disappear by some nefarious entity, and produce only a mandala effect of wondering whether or not it ever existed at all. Hopefully, this review stands as evidence should such a thing occur. Then again, Cineverse, XYZ Films, Feathered Fish Films, and the film’s other producers and distributors may be more interested in a more sustainable business venture. Regardless, the subtle artistry of suggesting someone is trying to silence this film is apropos paranoia, the stuff of horror legends, really, and an exceptionally intelligent part of what makes Project MKHEXE such a damn fun rabbit hole to go down.
Marketing aside, Project MKHEXE itself is a very different experience from what you may be thinking of when considering a found footage film. For starters, the movie isn’t a lot of shaky, out-of-focus camera work but instead strays ardently different from the pack. Some terrifically stylized camerawork utilizing six-screen security layouts and fixed dash cameras show you footage from both sides. This may not excite many moviegoers to learn, but it is an upgrade for the subgenre, which has become a punching bag for rarely innovating smoother presentations and technological enhancements. Though Project MKHEXE is an achievement in camera stability, one essential element is lacking in the film: the feeling that we’re witnessing an actual event.
Waddell does many things worth noting, including allowing Tim to explore his grief as an avenue for why he’s willing to believe something other than suicide could be at the forefront of his brother’s death. Exploring alternate theories is a part of the scientific process, and Tim, like his brother, explores the logical evidence or lack thereof. But no matter how improbable, Tim seems never to find that missing piece to push Sean’s findings past a collection of unrelated patterns related to psychosis and into an out-of-control experiment threatening to grow and expand as Project MKHEXE searches grow in popularity.
That evidence is also excellently disseminated in the film. Kudos to the construction of Sean’s “box of horrors,” which includes a diary clawing closer to madness every time we get a look, but understanding the frantic writings helps viewers commune with the POV character, feeling just as much a part of Tim’s journey to the truth as he explains the inner workings of MKHEXE directly to them. There are also little anthological tidbits, such as the tapes of a mommy blogger affected by a fringe product that drives her to the brink of madness and a college student who discovers the MKHEXE labs in an abandoned Chicago subway tunnel. These, as well as off-center forgotten TV shows like the diegetic Uncanny Fables, a supposedly disappeared 80s show with the inverted title of Amazing Stories that looks a lot like Unsolved Mysteries, help break up Tim’s documentary and further the meticulous backstory.
Yet, as quickly as evidence appears, it’s removed. Scrubbed from the internet and covered up frustratingly for truth seekers. Tim enlists the help of Sean’s friend Nicole (Jordan Knapp), who stokes Tim’s conspiratorial side as they go through Sean’s increasingly unhinged notebooks. The Mulder to his Scully, Nicole insists, “an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” meaning that without proof, they’ll need to continue digging for the irrevocable, conclusive pieces to present a conclusion one way or another.
Now, perhaps I’ve watched too many found footage movies, but there seems to be a lot to buy into about Project MKHEXE’s story. It’s some really out-there, messed-up, freaky shit, encompassing MKULTRA, WWII nazi scientist defectors, and cosmic forces. But, starting right from his proposed hypothesis about his brother’s death, Waddell commits to the bit, showing how easy it is to get wrapped up in patterns and paranoia, especially when you’d rather believe anything other than accept the truth. Project MKHEXE is an elaborate, almost paradoxical experience that builds its own conspiracy theory while simultaneously deconstructing them.
Sean Wilson’s alleged suicide and the strange occurrences leading up to it go pretty far off the deep end, and what then transpires is an amalgamation of conspiracy theories inspired by the paranoia elicited from nihilistic horror films ranging from the Lovecraftian elements of John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness to the media satirization cooked up in Videodrome. There are generalized nods to found footage films like Paranormal Activity and V/H/S, too, but more through technical process than outright inspiration.
Gerald Robert Waddell accomplishes the best found footage film of the year so far with Project MKHEXE, and people who enjoy a good conspiracy theory thriller are going to go nuts for it. Waddell has effectively erected an entire fantasy world from scratch and methodically simulated a nightmare inside of it. While there are genericisms in the plot line that make the film feel a bit less like a found footage movie and more like a preconceived narrative, many scenes remain intense and rattling even when the weirdness borders on absurdity. But that’s the point, right? Not only are we here for a kick-ass, f*cked-up movie, but alternative, countercultural perspectives helped breathe life into this idea. So long as each side is willing to follow the evidence, considering a conspiracy theory can (sometimes) be a creative and fun exercise.
Project MKHEXE streams [______REDACTED_____].
(Project MKHEXE streams on Screambox on April 29. Who keeps striking the text?)
Project MKHEXE – Apple TV
In this found-footage psychological thriller, Tim, an amateur filmmaker, returns home to film his brother Sean’s funeral after his apparent suicide. B…
