Director Chris Stuckmann started his career in the film industry by being one of the earliest film reviewers on video-sharing website, Youtube. Starting on the website in 2009, the film critic has gained over 2 million subscribers and over 779 million views, marking him as one of the biggest online critics. His career on the website has allowed him to focus on other big projects, from releasing two film-focused books and directing the short film, Auditorium 6, in 2017. In a controversial video released in 2021, Stuckmann revealed that he would be cutting down on his film-reviewing content, and he would stop reviewing films that he did not enjoy. His content would transform instead into informative videos on filmmaking and the work behind the camera, and his reviews to something more positive, focused on what he likes about new releases. This change was marked with the news of the film reviewer making the jump to becoming a full-fledged director, with Stuckmann stating it would not be fair to be a filmmaker who criticised other filmmakers. With the dawn of Youtube, there was bound to be a large movement of Youtubers making their way onto the big screen, with mixed success, from 2010’s Fred: The Movie and its sequels, to 2015’s Smosh: The Movie. In the years following however, there has been a clear movement of Youtubers making their way behind the camera rather than in-front, and to large success. From David F. Sandberg being able to get a career making films for Warner Bros, to Danny and Michael Philippou moving from their youtube channel RackaRacka to big screen horror features like 2022’s Talk To Me and 2025’s Bring Her Back, Youtube filmmakers are becoming common place, and it is only more impressive that Stuckmann could make the jump himself.
This film debut would come in the form of horror feature Shelby Oaks, which has finally released in cinemas this Halloween. Initially an independent feature, which was crowdfunded by Kickstarter, the film drew in a massive amount of support, becoming the most-funded horror film ever placed on Kickstarter. Its world premiere was held in 2024, at the 28th Fantasia International Film Festival, where horror director Mike Flanagan would come onboard as executive producer, and, after another screening, film distribution and producer company Neon would come onboard and would fund substantial reshoots. The film serves as a continuation to a set of short films Stuckmann released, focusing on an online paranormal investigation team known as the Paranormal Paranoids. Shelby Oaks sees a woman searching for her sister, who went missing during the production of an episode of the Paranormal Paranoids, when investigating the abandoned town that shares the film’s title.
Stuckmann’s debut starts out with great promise, pre-title drops, the first 30 minutes set a mood and a central intriguing mystery that the rest of the film can very clearly not deliver upon through its full runtime. The film has been advertised as a found-footage feature, and was labelled as so when initially announced, and the first act delivers on that, but once the title sequence drops, the real film begins. The best moments of the film are the eerie and creepy found footage of the Youtube ghost-hunters, as they encounter a sinister threat. Stuckmann delivers excellent scares which sometimes fall back on jumpscares but are more commonly based around mood and tension. Exposition is conveyed in a mockumentary style, which delivers on all the backstory required and setting up a mystery that engages the viewer. Found footage has always been a effective new horror sub-genre, conveying a realism that some horror features lack, and the simplicity of the scares help the terror feel real and palpable.
This opening good will only take a movie so far however, as the movie transitions into becoming a standard horror feature that stumbles and falls in attempting to answer its mysteries. Stuckmann’s film seems more concerned with building horror and tension, and showing off his impressive directorial talents, and lacks clear focus on delivering worthwhile characters or dialogue. Camille Sullivan does what she can with a script that doesn’t seem to concern itself with her or her character, as the downfall of her relationship with her character’s husband seems to just rely on cliches rather than to build anything worthwhile or dramatic. Cliches plague the second half of Shelby Oaks, from a sequence of the main character going the library to research the plot, a husband that does not believe the central supernatural events, or a scene with Keith David, who only serves to be a clairvoyant character who hands the plot reveals to the main character and the audience.
The film is clearly inspired by various other horror features, and uses various scenes, plotlines and scares as blueprints to transport over. It feels like a disjointed combination of Rosemary’s Baby, Hereditary and The Blair Witch Project in particular. Even the use of an online campaign where the advertisers are pretending that the events of the film are true and delivering more footage and theories on a website harkens back to the marketing campaign for The Blair Witch Project. The central tagline of ‘What Happened to Riley Brennan’, also seems to share a lot in common technically to ‘Who Killed Laura Palmer’ from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series. These inspirations plague that second half of the film and leave the film feeling predictable and unoriginal, and its only hurt more by an underwhelming finale that gives the film’s central mystery out on a whimper. As a directorial debut, the film feels like an entertaining B-movie that wants to be higher, but the third act strives for something grander and more metaphorical, that the film has not earned at all. It feels A24-lite, but in a way that is incredibly unsatisfying, and seems to be engaging with Stuckmann’s time as a Jehovah Witness during his youth, but this is not developed at all.
Shelby Oaks is a film fighting against itself, between an original mockumentary with clear tension and emotions, to a derivative and cliché supernatural feature with worrying special effects and a mystery that feels disjointed and not thought out at all. Things happen for seemingly no reason, as the plot races to the finish line with no time to stop and breathe, the only lights to be shown being the found footage sequences that still rear their head in the second half. The film is a good showcase of Stuckmann’s directorial talents, and it can only be hoped that he can continue after this, maybe with a screenwriter on hand to work on a script that can match his eye for visuals.
Rhys Reviews 