{"id":230105,"date":"2025-10-21T20:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/230105\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T20:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:00:07","slug":"a-clunky-horror-pastiche-from-chris-stuckmann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/230105\/","title":{"rendered":"A Clunky Horror Pastiche From Chris Stuckmann"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s been 26 long years since The Blair Witch Project popularized the found-footage horror<\/a> genre (which arguably began with 1980\u2019s Cannibal Holocaust). Many other films in the nearly three decades since have claimed their stake in the territory, some successfully, others less so. The latest is Shelby Oaks<\/a>, a new film that seeks to incorporate found-footage frights with mockumentary trappings and, eventually, regular old narrative filmmaking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn its opening stretch, Shelby Oaks \u2014 written and directed by YouTube<\/a> movie critic Chris Stuckmann<\/a> \u2014 positions itself as an unsolved-mystery documentary, of the sort that has grown massively popular on streaming services in recent years. A YouTuber who makes supernatural investigation videos, Riley (Sarah Durn), has gone missing while investigating the titular abandoned town, a wooded ruin in rural Ohio. Over a decade later, a documentary crew interviews Riley\u2019s sister, Mia (Camille Sullivan), who is determined to keep up the search.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tShelby Oaks\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tMore horror-movie fancam than something worth stanning.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, Oct. 24 (Neon)
Cast: Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Keith David, Sarah Durn, Robin Bartlett, Michael Beach
Writer and director: Chris Stuckmann
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 31 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe details of the case are chilling: The rest of Riley\u2019s ghost-hunter crew was found brutally murdered in a remote cabin; mysterious forms appear fuzzy in the background of the last known footage of Riley. It\u2019s an effectively eerie and intriguing set-up, and Stuckmann does a competent job of simulating the style and cadence of a real documentary. One doesn\u2019t get the impression that anything terribly novel will be shown to us, but Shelby Oaks does, as it begins, promise something sturdy and entertaining, a ghost story cleverly told in modern vernacular \u2014 executive produced by revered horror auteur Mike Flanagan, no less.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut then, alas, a gnarly incident occurs while the documentary cameras are rolling and Stuckmann violently shifts gears. The doc conceit falls away, replaced by a shallow attempt at the eerily elegant, off-kilter horror style codified by 2018\u2019s Hereditary<\/a>. A newly traumatized Mia embarks on a solo quest for answers, delving into the mysterious past of Shelby Oaks and the area surrounding it, which Stuckmann has dubbed Darke County.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOne cringes at that name, as it perhaps suggests some ambition to lay the groundwork for a cinematic universe, much as Universal tried to kickstart a Dark Universe franchise with 2017\u2019s dreadful The Mummy. Stuckmann has stated no such plans, but given his long YouTube history as something of a franchise-movie geek, it wouldn\u2019t be all that surprising if there was a hope to further explore the world of Darke County in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy an audience member would want to return, though, would be an even more vexing mystery than whatever happened to Riley Brennan. As Shelby Oaks moves further away from its original conceit, it grows ever clunkier, ever more derivative. Stuckmann\u2019s dialogue is stilted and generic; his storytelling and world-building even more so. There are some neat little stylistic flourishes that one can appreciate \u2014 a gliding camera here, a sudden switch from day to night there \u2014 until one realizes that, wait a second, those are things that happened in other recent horror movies. It is increasingly apparent that Shelby Oaks is less the realization of an original vision and more the result of a dedicated film nerd clumsily stitching together things he enjoyed watching in the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe influences are obvious, from the contemporary to the more classic. There\u2019s a witchy older woman, played gamely by the great Robin Bartlett, who brings to mind Ann Dowd in Hereditary and Ruth Gordon in Rosemary\u2019s Baby. (And, no fault of Stuckmann\u2019s, Amy Madigan in Weapons<\/a>.) A creepy prison clanks and moans in the strains of Session 9, the MTV show Fear and myriad video games. Paranormal Activity-style jump scares abound, so much so that they become repetitive, expected, devoid of shock. (It doesn\u2019t help that Stuckmann does way too much indicating of when they will arrive.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is a fine line between reverent homage and cheap pastiche; Shelby Oaks largely exists on the latter side. As the film hurries toward its muddled yet turgid conclusion, it becomes glumly apparent that there really wasn\u2019t much of an idea here to begin with. At least, not an idea that at all distinguishes itself amid the film\u2019s onslaught of tropes. The most frightening aspect of Shelby Oaks is the way it suggests what a fully AI movie might one day feel like: a mass of clich\u00e9s molded into something resembling cinema but falling uncannily short.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been reported that Stuckmann was at least partly inspired by matters from his own life, particularly his sister\u2019s excommunication from the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. But whatever personal motivation might lie behind the film is impossible to see in the final product \u2014 not in its boilerplate depiction of grief, not in its trite evocations of the occult. The many creaky, half-baked aspects of Shelby Oaks are all the more frustrating when one remembers the film\u2019s solid start, the specific point of view that gradually gives way to Stuckmann\u2019s plodding recitation of hoary horror-movie staples.<\/p>\n

\n\tFar be it from this critic to suggest that our lowly, sniping cohort dare not transcend to the realm of creative expression. Stuckmann should be applauded for the effort. But he might have more sharply applied some of his critical faculties to his own work. Had he taken that time, he may have found ways to make his film distinct from the many he\u2019s reviewed. Instead, there is Shelby Oaks as it is, a lumbering golem of hyped-up pull quotes about other people\u2019s stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been 26 long years since The Blair Witch Project popularized the found-footage horror genre (which arguably began…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,31727,75,367,337,31728,4718],"class_list":{"0":"post-230105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-chris-stuckmann","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-horror","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-shelby-oaks","15":"tag-youtube"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}