‘Shelby Oaks’ Review: Chris Stuckmann’s Relentlessly Frightening Debut Will Scare Both His Subscribers and Lurkers Alike [B+]
Horror has passionate fans. True lovers of the genre will seek out any film that aims to scare its audience, regardless of setting, style, or sometimes even quality. It’s a cinematic category that attracts and rewards passion, perhaps because there’s something uniquely quantifiable about how well a film succeeds at trying to scare viewers. It’s an attempt that’s measured in yelps and jumps – instinctual reactions that outside of a movie theater would indicate danger, but for real horror heads, those responses (or lack thereof) are a measure of a film’s success. And scare junkies are always seeking the next thrill. It’s no surprise, therefore, that horror is perpetuated by directors and writers who grew up surrounded by scary movies, developing a passion for joyful frights from a young age and continuing that sentiment through adulthood.
Chris Stuckmann certainly fits into this mold of filmmaker. Anyone who’s subscribed to the film lover’s YouTube channel, or even merely stumbled upon one of his energetic movie review videos, will know that he’s always treated horror with reverence and respect. For many (including this critic), he’s something of a lighthouse for scary movies, guiding film lovers to underrated horror releases both new and old. It’s perhaps predictable that he would one day make a movie of his own and even less surprising that he chose horror as the genre in which to make his directorial debut. His first feature Shelby Oaks shows a clear affection for the types of scary movies that kept millennials like Stuckmann up late at night, delving into the behind-the-scenes stories and urban legends associated with such legendary films as The Blair Witch Project and its many imitators and wannabes. Stuckmann’s passion and deep well of knowledge is clear, and just as impressive as his obvious credentials is the way he subverts expectations very early into his film. It’s an accomplished debut, and with Shelby Oaks, Stuckmann has crafted a tale that will successfully scare audiences just as well as the movies that inspired the director.
Sometime in 2021 in our real world, a series of mysterious videos began popping up on YouTube and making the rounds throughout online communities. They purported to be re-uploads of an amateur ghost hunting show called “Paranormal Paranoids” that released episodes in 2008. The videos are shot and edited in a way that immediately evokes nostalgia for the early days of YouTube, when content creators (before that was even a term) were able to succeed on their own merits without the need for big brand sponsorships or other tenets of brazen attempts at monetization. Like many of their contemporaries, the “Paranormal Paranoids” team was clearly in it for the love of the game. But before they could become well-known in their time, the group mysteriously vanished after posting just a handful of videos. In the footage that was uploaded, the group’s de facto leader Riley talks about frightening visions that she’s been experiencing, which gives the group’s disappearance an unsettling energy. They clearly didn’t just quit, something deliberate happened to them.
Four years later, the film Shelby Oaks explores the legacy of the “Paranormal Paranoids,” opening with documentary-style introduction that details their upsetting videos along with interviews with detectives and Riley’s family members, including her older sister Mia (Camille Sullivan). But just when it looks like this is going to be yet another faux-documentary horror film, Stuckmann flips the film on its head, abandoning the fictional non-fiction style for a more classical, sparsely unsettling one. His film follows Mia closely, giving viewers the feeling of being an unseen companion in her amateur missing person investigation, learning information and experiencing frights as she does.
After over a decade of waiting for any new developments in her sister’s case to emerge, Mia takes the search into her own hands after a mysterious stranger leaves a clue on her front doorstep. Desperate for any answers, she finds hints in her sister’s videos that suggest that something supernatural was happening to Riley and her crew, often hovering in the background or on the edges of the frame of their otherwise-convivial videos. Mia’s exploration takes her all the way back to her shared childhood with Riley, not to mention the terrifying decrepit locations that she must traverse while tracing her sister’s footsteps. Sometimes these misadventures strain logic and sense – by the time Mia is breaking into an abandoned and unbelievably ominous-looking prison, one might wish on her behalf that her sister had chosen a much more banal hobby than ghost hunting.
But more than anything, Shelby Oaks is relentlessly, mercilessly frightening. Stuckmann clearly knows how to craft a scare, repeatedly building tension until it reaches a nearly painful level. The aforementioned jail sequence is just one of a handful of sequences that had this reviewer embarrassingly covering his eyes. The film’s atmosphere and tone is unyieldingly upsetting from start to finish, not offering any relief to its audience. This is a film that patiently leads viewers to scares, much like the way Mia explores her investigation sites with extreme trepidation. At times, the way that Stuckmann chooses to not reveal a scary image in an obvious, cheap way works against him, as there are several instances where a character will react before it’s clear to viewers what exactly they’re afraid of. But still, it’s much more rewarding for a filmmaker to take a less apparent approach to their scares than those of films that rely on unearned jumps or bleak-yet-unfulfilling atmosphere.
Sullivan is simply fantastic as Mia. Once the film’s prologue concludes, she’s on-screen for nearly the entire film, managing to find different levels to her many frightened reactions. And although she’s clearly and increasingly terrified by each new upsetting revelation, she remains steadfast and courageous, playing Mia as a loving sister willing to push through fear in order to save Riley, despite the very obviously perilous situations in which she finds herself.
Shelby Oaks signals a promising start for Stuckmann’s directorial career. As shown by this film, his horror filmmaking instincts are finely tuned. He’s able to both effectively recreate handheld, amateur YouTube footage and shoot a handsome looking traditional horror film, using both styles to maximum effect. Shelby Oaks proves that the best art comes from those that have a clear love for the type of art they’re creating, which is a surprising rarity in film.
Grade: B+
NEON will release Shelby Oaks only 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
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