Chris Stuckmann is best known to audiences for his work on YouTube reviewing films, but the social media personality has recently turned his attention to directing a film and launched a record breaking crowd-funding campaign for his debut. The fruits of that labour, Shelby Oaks, debuted at this year’s Fantasia to rapturous applause. Then the film was picked up for distribution by Neon, a company at the top of their game after the unparalleled success of Longlegs. This weekend finds Shelby Oaks receiving its UK premiere at genre film festival Pigeon Shrine FrightFest.
A vocal fan of horror cinema, Stuckmann’s manoeuvring from critic to creator is a bold one. After years of pulling threads in other people’s creations, Stuckmann must be bracing for some backlash. Thankfully though, Shelby Oaks is an accomplished work of horror, with several stand out scare sequences. Shelby Oaks opens within the framework of a documentary. The footage tells the horrifying story of a group of YouTube paranormal investigators, ‘Paranormal Paranoid’, who went missing in 2008. Featuring an interview with Mia (Camille Sullivab), the sister of missing channel host, Riley (Sarah Dunn), the opening twenty minutes paint a very The Blair Witch Project style disappearance. Although the bodies of Riley’s castmates have been discovered years earlier, Mia is determined to uncover the truth about her sister.
The focus of this opening documentary segment is not to set the scene of the disappearance, but to paint Riley’s background. As Mia is interviewed she shares terrifying stories about Riley’s night terrors as a child, and stories about ‘the man in the window.’ These moments are suitably chilling, though it is the inclusion of the last publicised video of Riley that really gets your hair on your arms to stand up. Rather than create anything too invasive, Stuckmann uses this opportunity for a more stealth and insidious scare. The approach is highly effective, and long before the audience has even reached the opening credits (which appear around the twenty minute mark), the viewer is ready to crawl into their seat and avert their eyes.
Once this documentary portion has run its course, the crew leave Mia and husband Rob (Bredan Sexton III) alone; the style then switches to a more traditional horror presentation. After twelve years with nothing, Mia suddenly finds herself in possession of further information about Riley that will take her down a very unsettling path. Part true crime, part supernatural horror, Shelby Oaks is a sound blending of the two and leaves the audience unsure of where the greater horror lies. In addition to the opening Riley scare, Stuckmann manages to pull off several more effective scare moments. Some rely on jump scares more than others, but ultimately whilst Shelby Oaks has plenty of great in-cinema frights, it is those that come to the viewers hours later in the dead of night that are its strength.
The only slight issue with Shelby Oaks is that towards the end, the film seems to run out of steam a little. Stuckmann falls foul of an inability to fully know when to end his story and an argument could be made for several earlier conclusions than the one that was picked. The chosen ending is wonderfully brutal, sad, and has one kicker of a final image. Its inclusion therefore is understable, but getting to it feels a tad too drawn out. Luckily, the pace of the rest of Shleby Oaks, especially the early documentary segment, is enough to power through these more sluggish moments.
With Shelby Oaks, Chris Stuckmann has placed his (and his backers’) money where his mouth is and produced a super effective and atmospheric horror. Stuckmann deftly intertwines The Blair Witch Project with the most depraved true crime story one could think up, and in doing so creates a film that has the ability to frighten both inside and outside the screening. With Neon on board as distributor, Shelby Oaks has all the right ingredients to become the next most talked about horror of the year.
Shelby Oaks
Summary
A wickedly realised whirl of true crime, found footage and the supernatural, Shelby Oaks features some scary moments so effective that the viewer will take them home with them.
Shelby Oaks was reviewed at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2024.
