Project MKHEXE review
This secretive SCREAMBOX exclusive builds its own urban legend…and then deletes it from existence.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Project MKHEXE will stream exclusively on SCREAMBOX April 29, 2025
Project MKHEXE
Directed by Gerald Robert Waddell
Starring Ignacyo Matyina, Jordan Knapp, Will Jandro, Jennifer Lynn O’Hara, Dwayne Tarver and Sebla Demirbas
Project MKHEXE Review
I had an unintentional meta moment while preparing this review of the secretive SCREAMBOX original film Project MKHEXE. As I attempted to create the template for this review…add the poster, trailer, film credits…I discovered something incredibly rare. At the time of this writing…Project MKHEXE doesn’t have an IMDb page. It doesn’t even have a crowd sourced spot on TMDB. In fact, the only things turned up by a google search were placeholders to rent it on AppleTV and similar places…and a website designed for the film itself.
Clicking on the website, WHAT IS PROJECT MKHEXE, immediately felt like being swept back in time to the marketing of another found footage movie in 1999. The Blair Witch Project. If you’ve found your way to this website…you know about The Blair Witch Project. If you paid attention to the massive hype surrounding it before its release…you know where this is going. The Blair Witch Project did a lot more than usher in an everlasting era of found footage horror. It’s brilliant marketing campaign utilized the internet in a way that made people question whether what they were about to see was real. Project MKHEXE takes a similar tactic…with a clever twist.
We’ve seen far too much since 1999 to believe that a found footage horror film is going to be an authentic piece of missing footage. Project MKHEXE solves this problem by, like The Blair Witch Project, creating its own urban legend…and then deleting it. This isn’t the story of a local myth people have whispered about. This is the story of an urban legend that no one talks about at all. Because they can’t. Whenever a piece of information about it hits the internet…it’s promptly deleted. An urban legend disappeared by a conspiracy. You can imagine how failing to find so much as an IMDb listing for Project MKHEXE felt after learning all that.
I don’t want to get too deep into what Project MKHEXE is. Discovering what it’s doing is part of the fun. It involves a man named Tim whose brother’s recent suicide prompts him to investigate what happened just before his death. Turns out, and you can probably guess this part, his brother had been investigating a strange urban legend called Project MKHEXE. Under the guise of interviewing friends and family for a memorial to his late brother, Tim uncovers a lot of information that doesn’t appear to exist anywhere else. It became an obsession for his brother. We watch it become an obsession for Tim as well.
What Project MKHEXE is, and what happened to Tim’s brother, comprises the bulk of the footage we’re watching. Information comes fast…even if it doesn’t immediately make sense. Tim’s brother had collected every piece of evidence he could find. What it all means, and how it affected his brother, drives Tim’s investigation. Project MKHEXE feels like it should. An amateur documentary searching for answers about a mystery no one knows exists. Inevitably, strange things are going to start happening. Unlike The Blair Witch Project, there’s no need to get lost in the woods to discover the horrors of this urban legend. The dangers are all around…entering Tim’s world the same way that Project MKHEXE enters ours. Through a screen.
Project MKHEXE stands out from the standard found footage horror because it fully commits to its reason for existence. The format is too often co-opted by filmmakers who use it due to cost constraints instead of narrative purpose. I don’t want to knock the former…you do what you have to do to tell your story. Lighting a set takes a lot more time, effort and money than going handheld. But it can, and has, given a bad name to a format that finds a perfect home for stories like Project MKHEXE. Being found footage is a necessity for this movie. There’s simply no better way to tell it.
Project MKHEXE carefully crafts its information behind the scenes so that it can present itself in the most engaging way possible on it. The meaning of words, ancient cults, Nazi scientists, government programs, a strange machine…there’s a lot to this potential conspiracy. This faux documentary gives it to us in a compelling way that fits Tim’s mission. And that’s before the movie starts having fun with it.
The final act of Project MKHEXE pays off everything that it’s been building. Things go off the rails in a good way. Tim gets his answers…while ignoring the lesson. As much as his brother’s investigation was meant to expose Project MKHEXE to the world…it was also meant to serve as a warning. A phrase is repeated a few times during the film. What we fear, we create. That takes on a greater meaning by the end of Project MKHEXE. It also makes me wonder if this review will find itself deleted from the internet soon after I post it.
Scare Value
If you’ll pardon the pun…this was an interesting project. The story unfolds naturally while the doomed investigation grows increasingly dark. The final act of Project MKHEXE goes appropriately off the rails…earned through a unique and detailed build up. Creating its own urban legend, deleting it from existence, and then chasing its own loose ends results in a believability that most films struggle to find.
3.5/5
Project MKHEXE Link
Streaming on SCREAMBOX April 29
