‘Shelby Oaks’ Summons a Few Decent Scares Before Descending Into Standard Demon Spooks

Alci Rengifo

Chris Stuckmann’s “Shelby Oaks” feels like a movie made by a movie reviewer who has digested so many of the trends now in play. That is indeed the case. Stuckmann made a name for himself as a YouTube film critic, who amassed enough of a following to then shift to seriously making a movie and have it produced by popular director Mike Flannagan. After originally premiering at the Fantasia festival in 2024, Neon picked up the film for distribution and there has reportedly been quite a bit of tinkering since. What has been delivered is something that amounts to fan boy fun, nodding at everything from ‘90s paranormal shows to found footage thrillers and finally, to the ongoing cliché of pagan climaxes.

The movie opens like a high-end documentary. Clips and narration tell us about Riley Brennan (Sarah Dunn), the host of a hit YouTube series, “Paranormal Paranoids,” which looks like a riff on shows like “Ghost Hunters.” Public controversy generated over questions on whether the show’s strange videos were real or faked. Sometime around 2008, Riley went missing in the near-ghost town of Shelby Oaks. Her crew was found mangled to death. Her sister, Mia (Camille Sullivan), has been left pondering her sister’s fate ever since. Then, a strange man appears at her doorstep while the documentary crew is filming and shoots himself in the head. Here, the narrative now switches to a regular movie. Mia finds a DV tape on the suicide victim. When she starts watching the video, Mia discovers disturbing footage of Riley in a room facing off with what looks like a supernatural malevolent force. 

The very design of “Shelby Oaks” is tailored for film buffs to sit in the theater pointing out all the references. Stuckmann, a millennial, appears to be mining every lasting childhood and adolescent memory. The best part of the movie are its first sections, when it truly does feel like one of those eerie investigative shows in the style of “Sightings” or “Paranormal Borderline.” Those moments briefly confirm that Stuckmann understood how the impact of films like “The Blair Witch Project” comes from the feeling that we can’t see the answers. The town of Shelby Oaks becomes a perfect setting with its lonely woodlands and worn-out buildings. In terms of atmosphere, cinematographer Andrew Scott Baird creates a genuinely unnerving environment enhanced by Sarah Dunn and Camille Sullivan’s urgent performances. 

Maybe only Stuckmann can explain why he then shifts gears. Once the movie switches to the look of a regular feature, it becomes the lengthy equivalent of a student film. The story is reduced to a redundant search for answers by Mia, who mostly wanders around the woods, bumping into a pack of CGI demon hounds who get recycled to the point of losing any initial impact. Either there were budget limitations or the director could not envision another symbol for the evil our hero is chasing after. Ensuing plot developments are checklist items borrowed from movies like “Paranormal Activity” or “Babadook.” Mia tells her confused husband, who serves no purpose other than sitting at home as a convenient listening tool, about Riley having constant night terrors as a child, convinced there was a dark presence outside her window. A seasoned horror fan will guess that yes, for sure there was something there. Could that force from long ago have chased Riley into adulthood? Without a doubt. 

Without the grainy video look of the movie’s opening scenes, Mia’s eventual journey to the abandoned prison where her sister did a final, infamous segment of her show lacks any genuine fright. Stuckmann’s jump scares get repetitive and hollow, with those accursed devil hounds being his sole source of terror until Mia discovers answers pulled out of the “Hereditary” playbook. Ari Aster’s 2018 hit established an endlessly copied template for using paganism or good old demon worship to provide quick resolutions. The trick is to present it with a grounded, hyper realism which Stuckmann attempts here as well. Like a USC student imitating their favorite movies, we get the familiar tracking shots into low-lit attics and shadowy houses, culminating in someone summoning an archaic-sounding demon from the beyond. It might have worked out better had Stuckmann not thrown in a rather hilariously amateurish final shot using a CGI horned specter, which looks like a refugee out of the “Night on Bald Mountain” section of “Fantasia.” This Halloween season it might be best to revisit the better films this one desperately seeks to make us think about.

“Shelby Oaks” releases Oct. 24 in theaters nationwide.