PLOT: When Riley (Sarah Durn), a YouTube paranormal investigator, disappears, her older sister, Mia (Camille Sullivan), frantically searches for her.
REVIEW: Of all the films premiering at this year’s edition of the Fantasia Film Festival, very few have piqued the interest of genre fans everywhere, like Shelby Oaks. The feature directorial debut of YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann (who also wrote and co-produced the film), it was recently snapped up for theatrical release by Neon, who are riding high as a genre distributor following the success of Longlegs. Many of his fans are curious whether Stuckmann’s on-camera criticism translates into solid directorial chops.
So what’s the result? Sad to say, the hope that Shelby Oaks would be the next great horror debut was overblown. This is meant as no sleight against Stuckmann who, I must admit, I know next to nothing about. I’ve only seen a handful of his reviews, but he’s always struck me as a nice, personable guy. As a first film, Shelby Oaks isn’t terrible, but the decision to give this a huge build-up and release seems to have been fully motivated by his internet notoriety. I’ve seen other low-budget horror outings that were much better than this and vanished without a trace, although kudos to Stuckmann for parlaying his internet fame into a burgeoning career as a director.
To be sure, this is a tough film to review. The movie hinges on an interesting twist that occurs early in the film and changes things up in a big way, but everyone seeing it early has been asked not to reveal what it is. It’s a solid reveal, and I certainly won’t spoil it for you – dear JoBlo readers – but it leaves me having to unpack a movie I really can’t reveal too much about.
Shelby Oaks does take an interesting perspective on the found footage genre, with the film hinging around Camille Sullivan’s Mia, who is searching desperately for her paranormal investigator sister. While investigating a mysterious area called Shelby Oaks, she and her crew all vanished, with the horribly mangled corpses of her colleagues found soon after. However, the sister, Riley, was nowhere to be found. Everyone, including Mia’s harried husband, Robert (Brendan Sexton III) and the cop investigating the case (Mayor of Kingstown’s Michael Beach), think she’s dead.
Stuckmann clearly has a deep love for the genre, but there’s honestly nothing here you haven’t seen before. The debt it owes to The Blair Witch Project and Rosemary’s Baby is palpable, and Stuckmann, right now, isn’t a polished enough writer or director to really make Shelby Oaks a compelling watch. Some of the imagery is groan-worthy, with Mia saying at one point how she and her husband wanted to start a family but were sidetracked (for twelve years) by the case. How is this illustrated? By a clumsy, recurring shot of a baby crib filled with investigative files.
The switch from Mia to sleuth also seems to come out of nowhere, as does Robert’s descent from a supportive husband to someone who thinks his wife is going off the deep end (despite obvious evidence she’s on to something). Stuckmann does what he can with his low budget, but the movie’s biggest problem has nothing to do with limited resources. The fact is, it’s not scary at all. It’s incredibly tame, with it lacking any real tension despite an interesting, late-in-the-game performance from veteran actress Robin Bartlett (who I’ll always remember as “The French Teacher” in If Looks Could Kill).
The film is built around Camille Sullivan’s Mia, and she does what she can with a thinly written role. For much of the movie, her character seems one note, only for a late-in-the-game reversal that’s hard to swallow and runs contrary to much of what we’ve seen before. The movie does benefit from a polished score by The Newton Brothers, who frequently work with producer Mike Flanagan. Still, the film is so uneven that one wonders if Neon is planning to even out some of the rough spots before it eventually hits theatres.
In the end, Shelby Oaks is certainly not a trainwreck and decent enough that Stuckmann may indeed have a solid career ahead of him as a filmmaker. But it’s far from the brilliant debut one might expect, given that Neon is giving it a major release it doesn’t really deserve—or at least not in this critic’s opinion.
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