Critic Chris Stuckmann follows a long line of writers turned artists that goes back generations, turning his love for horror into his Kickstarter and Mike Flanagan-produced debut feature, which premiered originally at Fantasia in July 2024 before being picked up by Neon, slightly reconfigured, and now launching out of Fantastic Fest. Stuckmann’s love for the genre, especially the found footage one, could be one of the reasons this movie falters, as he too willfully cribs from superior works like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Lake Mungo” without really conveying the dread produced by the films that inspired him. “Shelby Oaks” is a film that plays like a checklist of clichés, a movie that so aggressively employs techniques we’ve seen work better elsewhere that it becomes almost numbing. Horror fans don’t mind familiarity, but not if it feels like the echo is all there is to listen to.
“Shelby Oaks” opens promisingly, sketching through what looks like interview segments for a documentary and news clips about the disappearance of a YouTube star (a kinda funny meta choice given how much Stuckmann grew his base in that realm) named Riley Brennan (Sarah Dunn). She was the face of a group of ghost hunters named the “Paranormal Paranoids,” a controversial bunch who created online debate over whether or not their impressive videos were real. How could they be? There must be something else going on in the shots of figures in doorways. Stuckmann flirts with but doesn’t commit to an interesting subplot about disbelieving what we’re seeing and how sometimes we should trust the image.
And then Riley and her three colleagues disappear, shortly after filming a segment at an abandoned prison. They had two cameras recording their shoots. The footage from one is found, and it reveals something horrible happened to Riley, but it’s hard to say what. Was she kidnapped? Did the demon she thought was hunting her for her entire life finally claim her? Or could the terror be closer to home? When everyone but Riley is found murdered and mangled, the mystery deepens.
Cut to 12 years later. Riley’s sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) has had her life defined by looking for answers about her sister although, in one of the script’s many confusing choices, she didn’t have to look very far given the path to sis goes through the haunted prison and haunted amusement park in the town that she explored most often. Those might be the first two places I would look. After a guy shows up on Mia’s porch with the missing tape in his hand, she sets off to finally find Riley, discovering that the unexpected visitor was an inmate at the prison where Riley shot some of her last footage. Did he take Riley? Why? Could she still be alive?
After the prologue of “Shelby Oaks,” Stuckmann pivots from found footage to traditional filmmaking, and the air comes out of his premisee. The found footage has a little bit of danger in it that the over-polished digital filmmaking simply does not. This is kind of a deep cut for horror fans but it’s like going from “Hell House LLC” to “Hell House LLC: Lineage,” a movie that sought to answer the questions from the cult hit former but proved that traditional filmmaking didn’t suit the story. The same is true here as Stuckmann and his team can’t find any convincing or original visual language outside of Riley’s videos. There’s something unsettling about seeing something that shouldn’t be there in the back of a grainy video, something that the people in the foreground aren’t even aware of, but that kind of actual visual danger just doesn’t exist in the bulk of the film.
It’s partially because Stuckmann goes back to the same wells with abandon. This movie might set a record for shots of people slowly turning their head to see what’s behind them. A character seeing its breath in a room that shouldn’t be cold gets hammered. So does a cracking window. It’s not just that they’re clichéd horror tricks, it’s that they’re all used more than once. I’m not sure there’s a single image, including demons in the background and a creepy hellhound, that doesn’t get the repeat treatment.
Stuckmann is a smart dude, and one has to admire the commitment to getting this film made. He’ll bounce back, especially given he’s now been given a thumbs up by Neon. He was also smart enough to give character actor Keith David a movie-stealing scene as the former prison warden who tells Mia about how his facility went to shit and how one of his inmates might have been possessed. A movie about a guy trying to run a haunted prison might have felt more original than this retread. Maybe they can explore that idea in the sequel. At least it’s a new one.
This review was filed from the premiere at Fantastic Fest. It will be released on October 24, 2025.
