Terror Films Releasing is not presenting a new film on September 25, 2026. It is resurrecting one. The Night Marchers is coming worldwide to Tubi, Chilling, The Roku Channel, Fandango at Home, sold on footage of a band that disappeared 25 years ago. This is a film from 2001. It opened in Hawaii on February 16 of that year, is approximately 67 minutes long, and cost approximately $40,000. Twin brothers Blake and Brent Cousins wrote and directed and star alongside twins Kevin and Kelvin Antonio. A documentary crew investigates the legend of the Night Marchers, disappears and the story arrives through their tapes.
The Blair Witch Project came first and the resemblance isn’t subtle. Reporting from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin places filming between October 1999 and February 2001, almost entirely within the Blair Witch window, although Blake Cousins said at the time that they used handheld footage before Blair Witch opened. Burl Burlingame’s 2001 Star-Bulletin review attacked imitation, improvised dialogue, and amateurism, while admitting that the cast was convincing when scared, that a few shocks occurred, and that the film did what it set out to do. But found footage had no rules in 2001. Two brothers with $40,000 were guessing, and the crudity that now reads as incompetence was the normal condition of the format.
Hawaiian horror gives it an identity all its own
The Waipiʻo Valley, caves, and lava tubes are not generic woods, and the Night Marchers are not a made-up monster. They come from Hawaiian tradition, from stories of processions associated with ancient warriors and ali’i, beliefs belonging to a living culture. The Cousins brothers grew up in Hawaii, wanted the horror to be built on legends local audiences already knew, consulted Hawaiian scholars as well as Reynold and Abraham Kamakawiwoʻole, and framed the message with respect for Hawaiian culture and its people. During its first week at Kress Cinemas in Hilo, it attracted nearly three times as many viewers as Hannibal at the same multiplex. This is about cinema attendance and not the national box office. The weeklong booking stretched to about a month, then to screenings elsewhere in Hawaii.
Too hard to call it a masterpiece. The improvisation goes astray, the effects are worth what $40,000 bought, and anyone who grew up with careful found footage will feel all the limitations. Treat stories of unexplained on-set events like filmmaker anecdotes. But call it a cheap imitation of Blair Witch and you lose the best story: a small Hawaiian production that briefly edged out Hannibal in its own town and survives as a snapshot of DIY horror in the early digital age.
