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Tag: Shelby Oaks

  • ‘Shelby Oaks’ Director Chris Stuckmann on That Horrific Ending, Shooting on 2000s Camcorders and His YouTube Origins

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    SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the ending of “Shelby Oaks,” now playing in theaters.

    So, who took Riley Brennan?

    Director Chris Stuckmann makes his directorial debut with Neon’s horror “Shelby Oaks,” which follows the disappearance of a YouTuber and amateur ghost hunter Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn). Having started his career as a film critic and essayist on YouTube, Stuckmann makes the transition to director with a horror movie that expertly blends media and feels at times like a mockumentary ripped right from the video platform.

    Camille Sullivan stars as Mia Brennan, who has been searching for her younger sister Riley after she vanished 12 years ago in the remote town of Shelby Oaks with her YouTube group, the Paranormal Paranoids. The film starts out like a fictional documentary on Riley’s disappearance, but then transforms into a supernatural horror that uses found footage and scripted scares unlike any recent studio movie. It’s like “Blair Witch Project” for the YouTube generation, and Stuckmann uses his years of experience on the platform to maximum effect.

    With Variety, the director discusses his YouTube origins, shooting on old-school camcorders and that shocking ending.

    Courtesy Everett Collection

    Why was “Shelby Oaks” the story you wanted to tell with your directorial debut?

    I didn’t want to give any producers that I met a chance to turn me down, so I wrote probably like six or seven spec scripts and I went to film festivals and met so many different filmmakers and spent a lot of time trying to meet people and network and get to a place where I could make a connection with someone. It finally helped me get a movie off the ground, because I had been trying for so long. I didn’t want to go into these situations with one script and pitch. So I went into a lot of these film festivals hoping to meet producers with a lot of scripts and pitches. When I bumped into Aaron Koontz at Fantastic Fest in 2019, I had two or three different things I could have pitched him at the time, and “Shelby Oaks” was the one that caught his attention. From there, it became a process of developing it.

    I’m from the Midwest, but I’d never heard of Darke County in Ohio before. How did you choose that as your setting?

    I was trying to think of a general area in Ohio to set it in. Obviously Shelby Oaks is fictional, but as soon as I discovered the name “Darke” and it has an E, which makes it feel more artsy and it’s farm country, it’s literally exactly what I want. I’ve taken a bit of a “Castle Rock” approach because a lot of my spec scripts take place in Darke County, this little mini cinematic universe that may or may not happen one day.

    How did you blend the mix of mockumentary footage, YouTube found footage and scripted horror?

    Being on YouTube since 2009, there is a phenomena that I have witnessed over the years: People like to watch people watch things. Reacting videos are a very, very popular trend. There is something very inviting about the idea of seeing a person take in information. There’s this sequence with Mia where she watches the tape, and you’re kind of there with her feeling her emotions. She’s your conduit for these emotions. I really love the idea of mixing media, because I feel like that’s how we all live now. We all pop on TikTok, YouTube, TV, movies, audio books, physical books, there’s no set thing for all of us. We all experience media in different ways.

    Was there ever a version of this that was a full mockumentary version?

    It started out completely mockumentary. The very first pitch that we ever had was that, out of necessity. My first idea for this movie was that I would self-finance it for like $20,000 and put it on YouTube, because I was tired of waiting. Eventually the ideas kept evolving and kept coming. As I was writing, I couldn’t stop it. It was this whole thing, and now I had to figure out where this goes. The way it came to me was that every time you watch a mockumentary that’s fictional, you know it’s fictional. You’re in on the joke. I understand that most of them are made out of a budgetary necessity, but since we’re all in on the joke, why can’t we have some fun with this? We have cameras that the actors are aware of, why can’t we also have cameras they’re not aware of and just play in that world?

    Some of the found-footage jump scares feel like throwbacks to the early days of scary YouTube videos, like the “Relaxing Car Drive” video that I’m sure many people have stumbled upon. How did you make these retro, proto-internet scares?

    I do think it does have something to do with YouTube, the internet and the creepypasta generation. We all look for ways to describe how art makes us feel through past pieces of art. We always try to find a way to connect. But we’re in this generational shift now where filmmakers are starting to come out of the early YouTube years. Not all the inspiration is coming from film or TV anymore. A lot of it is coming from the internet. Like you mentioned that relaxing car video, I remember watching that back in the day and the thing pops up at the end and I’m falling back in my seat. We weren’t used to being scared by the internet yet. The internet was still kind of a remotely safe place. There wasn’t social media yet. When things on the internet started to scare us, it’s a whole new world of potential horror that can be mined. The mixed media element was very important to me to present different types of scares. The found-footage scare is very different from the traditional narrative scare, not just in visual presentation, but in sound. In the traditional narrative portion of the film, we really opened up the sound channels and explored so many more possibilities of what we could do with sound. In the the earlier portions of the movie, we tried to restrict ourselves a little bit more to the types of sounds that would come from an old-school camcorder. In those Paranormal Paranoids episodes, I shot all those myself with gear from pre-2008. The camcorder was from 2006. The microphone we used was from 2007. We didn’t allow ourselves to have things they wouldn’t have had.

    Did you always imagine the ending as a bleak punch to the gut? How much of it did you want to leave open to interpretation for fans?

    Yes, there was never any question for me. All of my favorite horror films tend to have an ending that sticks with you. Obviously, when you’re trying to get your script seen, there are going to be people who make requests, especially some of the less risk-taking producers. I was always very adamant that this has got to be the way it is. When I think about all my favorite horrors, they’re very rarely warm and fuzzy at the end.

    If you want to look at just the emotion of it, when something happens to you when you’re younger that leaves a scar or some kind of trauma that it sticks with you, you could view that literally as a crack in a window. If you don’t fix it or get and try to better your life, you just let it sit there and fester and grow and spider-web into something worse, eventually it will probably eat you alive. That’s been the emotional idea behind this thing that has always been looming in the background of Riley and Mia’s life that is also literally represented by this window in the conclusion of the movie. It’s all in there, and there’s a lot of hidden stuff too in various shots.

    There are so many filmmakers, like Danny and Michael Philippou and Curry Barker, who are getting Hollywood deals after starting out on YouTube. How does it feel to see them grow after starting out online?

    I think it’s absolutely wonderful. I’ve talked with Danny and Mike, and I had Danny and Curry on my podcast. When I started my YouTube channel in 2009, it took about six years before I even was able to get press tickets to movies at advanced screenings. That’s because at that time, YouTube as a platform was not taken seriously by Hollywood. If you said you were a YouTube film critic, they’d be like, ‘Cool. Have a nice day.’ Now, when you go to a premiere, what do you see everywhere? YouTubers and TikTokers. Hollywood has had to take the platforms seriously. I think it’s the same with film. There is a new generation of people in their 30s or late 20s who are coming up and started on Vine, TikTok and YouTube. Now they’re getting a chance to make movies, because that is the progression of time that we’re in. If YouTube existed in the ’70s or ’80s, I guarantee Scorsese, Spielberg, Robert Rodriguez, all those guys, would have been uploading.

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    Jordan Moreau

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  • ‘Shelby Oaks’ Review: Part Found-Footage Horror, Part Mockumentary, Entirely Clunky

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    It’s been 26 long years since The Blair Witch Project popularized the found-footage horror genre (which arguably began with 1980’s 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 new film that seeks to incorporate found-footage frights with mockumentary trappings and, eventually, regular old narrative filmmaking. 

    In its opening stretch, Shelby Oaks — written and directed by YouTube movie critic Chris Stuckmann — 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’s sister, Mia (Camille Sullivan), who is determined to keep up the search. 

    Shelby Oaks

    The Bottom Line

    More horror-movie fancam than something worth stanning.

    Release date: Friday, Oct. 24 (Neon)
    Cast: Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Keith David, Sarah Durn, Robin Bartlett, Michael Beach
    Writer and director: Chris Stuckmann

    1 hour 31 minutes

    The details of the case are chilling: The rest of Riley’s 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’s 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’t 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 — executive produced by revered horror auteur Mike Flanagan, no less.

    But 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’s Hereditary. 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. 

    One 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’s dreadful The Mummy. Stuckmann has stated no such plans, but given his long YouTube history as something of a franchise-movie geek, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if there was a hope to further explore the world of Darke County in the future. 

    Why 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’s dialogue is stilted and generic; his storytelling and world-building even more so. There are some neat little stylistic flourishes that one can appreciate — a gliding camera here, a sudden switch from day to night there — 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. 

    The influences are obvious, from the contemporary to the more classic. There’s a witchy older woman, played gamely by the great Robin Bartlett, who brings to mind Ann Dowd in Hereditary and Ruth Gordon in Rosemary’s Baby. (And, no fault of Stuckmann’s, Amy Madigan in Weapons.) 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’t help that Stuckmann does way too much indicating of when they will arrive.) 

    There 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’t much of an idea here to begin with. At least, not an idea that at all distinguishes itself amid the film’s 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 clichés molded into something resembling cinema but falling uncannily short. 

    It’s been reported that Stuckmann was at least partly inspired by matters from his own life, particularly his sister’s excommunication from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. But whatever personal motivation might lie behind the film is impossible to see in the final product — 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’s solid start, the specific point of view that gradually gives way to Stuckmann’s plodding recitation of hoary horror-movie staples.

    Far 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’s reviewed. Instead, there is Shelby Oaks as it is, a lumbering golem of hyped-up pull quotes about other people’s stuff. 

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    Richard Lawson

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  • The New ‘Shelby Oaks’ Trailer Is a Suspenseful Trip Back to Found Footage Frights

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    The debut feature from Chris Stuckmann delves into the chilling journey of a woman searching for her paranormal investigator sister, who went missing a decade earlier.

    Check out Neon’s trailer for the Fantastic Fest fave Shelby Oaks, which Stuckmann made with the help of his YouTube film platform. Together with his followers, he rallied to get the film financed through grassroots efforts and support of the online horror film community, including producer Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) and Aaron B. Koontz (Scare Package).

    The campaign for the budget ended up becoming one of the highest-funded horror films in the history of Kickstarter and was made off the $1.4 million raised. 

    Color us intrigued: a missing sister and some paranormal urban exploration at a haunted amusement park? We’re so in.

    The film stars Camille Sullivan and Sarah Durn as sisters who, through the blend of the latter’s YouTube paranormal investigation before her disappearance and the docu-style footage of the search for her, build a compelling mystery. The vibe from the trailer has a tone we can’t quite put our finger on, as the narrative use of found footage captures some scary-as-hell imagery. There are disturbing, bright-eyed ghosts and creepy corridors filled with some chilling moments, but it’s the mystery surrounding the film’s two sisters that really has us hooked.

    Stuckmann’s got the Flanagan seal of approval and a really solid early buzz from the festival circuit. io9’s own Germain Lussier praised in his review from Fantastic Fest 2025, “This is a horror film for and by the YouTube generation: one that’s inspired by many horror films of the past, with little regard for when or how to borrow from them. As long as it’s cool and scary. Which Shelby Oaks is.”

    So, at the very least, it seems like a good Halloween flick to catch this spooky season. The film distributed is already garnering good word of mouth online, so we’ll be keen to catch it when it releases.

    Shelby Oaks is set to open in theaters on October 24.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Sabina Graves

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  • ‘Shelby Oaks’ is a Satisfying, Scary Spin on Found Footage Movies

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    One of the best things about the found footage genre can also be one of its most frustrating. By its very nature, classic found footage movies can never answer all your questions because the camera has to stop. The footage almost always ends with some big, scary revelation, but things can’t go beyond that because….well, the footage had to be found. On one hand, that can make for terrifying moments, and imagination will often be scarier than reality. On the other hand, it would be nice to learn exactly why that guy was standing in the corner from time to time.

    Shelby Oaks, the feature debut of YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann, does both. Starting things in both found footage and faux documentary styles, the film builds an intriguing, creepy mystery before totally changing the point of view and becoming a traditional narrative film. The choice gives the audience the best of both worlds as we get all sorts of creepy found footage moments, but also actual concrete answers about how and why it’s all happening. It’s a transition that’s a little awkward, but ultimately works because the story it’s telling keeps us engaged.

    That story centers on Mia (Camille Sullivan), a young woman being filmed for a documentary about her missing sister, Riley (Sarah Durn). Riley was part of a four-person paranormal hunting YouTube team who all went missing. Three were eventually found, but Riley was not—and for over a decade, Mia has held out hope of finding her.

    Neon

    For the first act of the film, the point of view is that of the documentary’s director as we learn about Riley and her YouTube channel, Mia’s struggles with losing her sister, and the background of the town they went missing in, Shelby Oaks. But when something completely changes the direction of the documentary, Struckmann completely changes his point of view. All the faux documentary we watched that inlcuded lots of found footage of Riley and her team’s final mission goes away. Suddenly, Shelby Oaks is a normal film where the characters aren’t aware there is a camera because in their world, there isn’t.

    From there, the point of view flips back and forth a few times depending on which best serves the story. Considering how we’ve become so accustomed to faux documentaries, found footage films, and narrative films each on their own, moving between the three styles can feel jarring at times. But the mystery of this missing YouTube group is too delicious to ignore, especially as new revelations come to light.

    What helps even more is that at every stage, Stuckmann finds ways to keep us on the edge of our seats. Sometimes it’s a jump scare or a character noticing something in a reflection of footage. Other times, it’s as simple as keeping the camera lingering on something for a few beats longer than usual, just to let our eye wander and see what we discover. Often there’s nothing, but once in a while there’s something, and not knowing keeps the scares fresh and interesting.

    As the film reaches its conclusion, a few overly coincidental incidents risk hurting the film, but the way the script pays them off by the end covers all that. Ultimately, Shelby Oaks cares about two things: creating a mystery that scares us, and giving us answers that are potentially even scarier. It takes a few leaps of faith and messy transitions to get there, but by the end, that doesn’t change the result. This is a horror film for and by the YouTube generation: one that’s inspired by many horror films of the past, with little regard for when or how to borrow from them. As long as it’s cool and scary. Which Shelby Oaks is.

    Shelby Oaks just had its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest 2025, and opens in theaters on October 24.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Germain Lussier

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  • 10 Indie Genre Films We’re Excited for This Fall

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    You’d be hard-pressed to be a movie fan if you didn’t find a big Hollywood release to be excited about this fall. Maybe it’s the return of the Avatar, Predator, or Tron franchises. Maybe it’s a new film from an iconic filmmaker like Edgar Wright, Guillermo del Toro, or Yorgos Lanthimos. Or, maybe you can’t wait to be scared by new films in the Conjuring, Black Phone, or Five Nights at Freddy’s franchises. Whatever the case, as usual, Hollywood tries to have something for everyone. But there’s always more.

    Below, we’ve got 10 genre films that aren’t from major studios and often don’t have big-name stars, but we’re still excited to see them. There’s some horror, there’s some romance, there’s some animation, and more. But all could potentially be flying under your radar.

    Rabbit Trap (September 12)

    Dev Patel stars in this Sundance film about a couple who move to the woods only to discover a mysterious, otherworldly sound.

    Night of the Reaper (September 19 on Shudder)

    We love a good period slasher film, and Night of the Reaper, about a babysitter haunted by the titular slasher, sounds like it’s going to deliver exactly that.

    Xeno (September 19)

    Kevin Hart produced, but doesn’t star in, this story of a young girl and a mysterious creature who go off on an adventure.

    Good Boy (October 3)

    An adorable dog witnesses his owner encounter an escalating series of paranormal activities. No, not the movies.

    V/H/S/Halloween (October 3 on Shudder)

    In what’s basically become an annual tradition, the VHS franchise is back with another series of spooky anthologies, all themed around everyone’s favorite holiday.

    Shelby Oaks (October 3)

    A woman believes a new discovery may be the key to finding her long-lost sister and the demon potentially behind it all.

    Deathstalker (October 10)

    The latest film from director Steven Kostanski (The Void, PG: Psycho Goreman) is an epic fantasy horror adventure. Just the way we like them.

    The poster for Queens of the Dead – IFC

    Queens of the Dead (October 24)

    Katy O’Brian stars in this neon-infused horror comedy about what happens when a group of people in a club realizes a zombie apocalypse is happening outside.

    Eternity (November 26)

    The Scarlet Witch, aka Elizabeth Olsen, returns. Only this time, she’s dead. And in the afterlife, she has to choose between her two husbands.

    Scarlet (December)

    A new anime from director Mamoru Hosoda, Scarlet follows a sword-fighting princess on an adventure through the afterlife. Originally set for wide release this year, it was recently pushed into next year, but it will get a small, awards-qualifying run sometime in December.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Germain Lussier

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