How YouTube Critic Chris Stuckmann Turned His Love of Scary Movies Into Making a Mercilessly Frightening One of His Own [Interview]
Chris Stuckmann is following his dream career path. After making a name for himself in the YouTube film critic world – where he became particularly known for his horror movie opinions – he’s successfully pivoting to filmmaker with his debut feature Shelby Oaks. The horror film follows a woman named Mia (played by an incredibly committed Camille Sullivan) as she searches for her sister Riley, who went missing over a decade previously. Riley was the leader of an amateur ghost hunting team called the “Paranormal Paranoids,” who uploaded their supernatural investigation videos to their YouTube channel under the same name in 2008 before all abruptly and inexplicably disappearing.
The film is both effectively scary and impressively crafted, using both a found footage-style for the charmingly lo-fi YouTube videos and traditionally-filmed horror for the overarching story of Mia’s search. Thanks to his well-made film, Stuckmann successfully establishes himself as a writer-director, forging a new path in the public eye. Although, as Stuckmann details in his interview with us, his move to behind the camera has been a long time coming and should be no surprise to those who have followed him over the years.
Cody Dericks: Chris, how are you doing today?
Chris Stuckmann: Hey, what’s going on, man? Nice to see you.
CD: So I just want to start out with – I’m a huge horror buff, and your movie Shelby Oaks really fucked me up, so thank you for that, and also congrats!
CS: Oh man, thank you so much, Cody. That means a lot. It’s funny, I’ve been telling people, I think it’s so interesting that horror fans, when they come up to you and they say, “Something you’ve made traumatized me.” And then I go, “Good.” It’s a very unique thing that you only really can find amongst horror fans.
CD: Thank you for the nightmares, the therapy bills, all of it. It’s a compliment. So I want to start with the “Paranormal Paranoids” videos that are on YouTube, and they were put there about four years ago with no obvious connection to Shelby Oaks. Obviously, it calls to mind the kinds of early viral marketing that, say, The Blair Witch Project did, which just warms my heart. Can you tell me about the creation of these videos?
CS: Sure. Actually, I mean, right behind me, this is the camcorder we used to shoot all those.
CD: Oh hey, yeah.
CS: It’s a Canon ZR90, and we shot on mini DV tape and we tried to make it as authentic as possible for the era. We didn’t use any gear or equipment that wasn’t at least up until 2008. So all of that, even in the editing process, we used iMovie on my old iMac that I still have. I had to dig it out of storage and it was filled with dust and it literally took 30 minutes to power on, but we did it. I think the idea was largely inspired actually by the Cloverfield ARG campaign from 2008. Because I remember seeing that trailer, it was attached to Transformers, and it was just the Statue of Liberty head falling out of the sky and a creature roar, and then no title and a date, and you had no idea what it was.
And I ran home online and I was mesmerized by the fact that there was already all of this stuff online about it. And there were news reports out of Japan about a thing that fell from the sky and you could look and find all of this stuff already. And it made it feel really unique and interesting, and people were debating if it was a King Kong movie or a Godzilla movie or what it was. And that level of ferocious excitement, I’ve never really been able to recapture in a marketing campaign. And I love the idea of having all of our videos of the “Paranormal Paranoids” already out there on the internet. And when people hear about this movie, they can go and see that there’s three or four year old videos of them. And it’s a really unique feeling that I just haven’t really seen in too many marketing campaigns.
CD: So obviously you made a name for yourself in the YouTube sphere as a film critic. I want to know what it was like going from film critic to writer-director. Were you able to, say, leverage your critical eye to help figure out what to do and, more importantly, what not to do as a filmmaker?
CS: Sure. I think the film critic-to-filmmaker is absolutely a true thing to say about me in regards to my front facing public perception of who I am and what I’ve done. And most people who know my name or know of me is because they discovered my YouTube channel. So it makes perfect sense. But I’ve been making movies since I was a kid, and ever since I was 14 I’ve been making short films and amateur features and stuff as a teenager, and I’ve never been able to turn that part of my brain off. So even when I was reviewing movies full-time, I was always approaching them from the lens of a filmmaker and trying to get into the filmmaker’s head of what they were trying to communicate with their vision.
And I didn’t really think of myself as a film critic. I know that on paper I definitely was. It’s just that I didn’t really think of myself that way. And so transitioning to being a filmmaker, for me, it felt like I was just doing what I’ve always wanted to do and always hoped to do. And it didn’t feel like a transition to me. I think the struggle is really in public perception, and that really is the transition that I am enduring of people noticing, “Okay, so he’s doing this and now he’s doing this.” And hopefully on the second film, the idea of film critic turned filmmaker is not so much a talking point anymore. And it’s like, “Well, I guess he’s just a filmmaker now.”
CD: I mean, this movie is really carving that out for you. So I know once more people get to see it, that will not be an issue moving forward.
CS: Thank you, man.
CD: So the great Mike Flanagan is an executive producer on your film, and I’m sure that must feel like a huge accomplishment. I specifically remember your channel, you know, 12 years ago was how I first heard about Oculus, and now he’s one of my guys. So tell me what it was like working with Mike.
CS: It’s interesting because that Oculus review is the review that connected us, because at that time he had just had that feature and his movie Absentia before that, but most people didn’t know about Absentia. And so Oculus was where most people were introduced to him. And he reached out to me and thanked me for that review because I was super praiseworthy and just absolutely, you know, I was bubbly about that movie. And I remember in the video I was like, “Whoever this Mike Flanagan is, you got to look out for him. He’s going to be great!” And we kinda became friends after that for many years.
And when he read Shelby Oaks, he was pretty excited about it. And I went off and shot it and he became more of a force in post because he saw a cut of the movie, and It was a two and a half hour assembly cut of it, which is, you know, there’s no artistic value to it, it’s just the scenes in chronological order, basically. It’s everything you shot in order. It’s like looking at the storyboards of your movie laid out and without anything else. And he was like, “I want to actually be involved in this officially now.” Because he loved that cut. And he’s an editor too. He edits most of his stuff. And so he was able to see, I think, the value there of what it could be in that version. And he is genuinely one of the nicest humans I’ve ever met in my life. He literally texted me this morning, just random stuff. It doesn’t have to be about film. It can just be like, “Oh, hey, I’m doing this. What are you up to?” He’s just a regular guy who just so happens to be a very talented filmmaker. And I feel very, very lucky that I was able to meet someone in the industry who has not been affected by any level of fame, who hasn’t allowed that to go to his head, who is just a good person.
CD: It’s funny, I feel like so many horror filmmakers I speak to who do some really messed up stuff on-screen are often the nicest people.
CS: It’s true, Cody, and I think it is because a lot of us get our demons out on-screen, and we just let that be the voice of our darkest thoughts and then we can be, you know, regular in real life. It’s why I think a lot of comedians can be depressed in real life and deal with that because they’re so funny on-screen. And then in real life it’s like, “Well, am I being funny for real or am I being funny for my job?” And then they get into those darker territories. It’s interesting when you think about filmmakers that tell specific types of stories and how that can take something out of them. For, I think, horror filmmakers, I think it’s a good thing because a lot of our darkest stuff gets out of us and ends up on the screen.
CD: You’re obviously a horror aficionado, and I saw very specific influences throughout this film, definitely a lot of Lake Mungo in the Riley character’s backstory. What other pieces of media, whether that was film or television or anything, did you draw inspiration from for Shelby Oaks?
CS: I think the other film alongside Lake Mungo is a Japanese mockumentary called Noroi. Really fantastic movie, one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen. And it also blends various forms of mixed media. It has, obviously, the interview idea, it has a documentary crew following someone, it has TV commercials in it, it has variety shows that are in it to tell its story, newspaper articles. And I remember seeing both Noroi and Lake Mungo and thinking that there were endless ways to tell a story in movies that wasn’t just the straightforward path. And the ultimate goal for me with Shelby was to reflect how we consume information today. Because our way of consuming information is also through mixed media. We watch TikTok, we watch YouTube, we watch people watch stuff, we watch reaction videos. There is no one way that we consume stories. And I felt that making a horror movie, not only in a budgetarily efficient way to allow us to do that, was a fun way to also explore this idea of mixed media.
CD: Amazing. Well, Chris, thank you so much for chatting with me. And thank you for this movie. Again, fucked me up, can’t wait to tell all my fucked up friends about it, and people are going to love it.
CS: Thank you, Cody. I appreciate it, man.
Shelby Oaks will be in theaters on October 24.
He currently resides in Chicago and is a proud member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. He also writes and podcasts for Next Best Picture and co-hosts his own podcast “Halloweeners: A Horror Movie Podcast.” You can follow him on Twitter, Letterboxd, and Bluesky @codymonster91
- Interview: How the Hair and Makeup Wizards Behind ‘Weapons’ Created a Lasting Icon in Aunt Gladys - November 10, 2025
- ‘Palestine 36’ Review: Annemarie Jacir’s Drama is a Largely Untold Tale of Early Palestinian Struggle [C+] CIFF - October 29, 2025
- ‘Whitetail’ Review: From Nanouk Leopold’s Frustratingly Imbalanced Irish Drama Emerges a Star-Making Performance from Natasha O’Keeffe [C+] CIFF - October 26, 2025
‘Frankenstein’ to Receive Visionary Honor from Palm Springs International Film Awards 
Robert Yeoman to be Honored with American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award 
National Board of Review: ‘One Battle After Another’ Tops in Film, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor; Netflix Lands Four in Top 10 
41st Spirit Awards Nominations: ‘Peter Hujar’s Day,’ ‘Lurker,’ ‘Train Dreams’ Lead