Shelby Oaks

When admiration curdles into horror-loving imitation.

Loving cinema doesn’t automatically make you a great screenwriter. I’m sorry to start this review that way—and I don’t mean to sound pretentious or cruel—but “Shelby Oaks” is a disaster for several reasons.

The film marks the feature debut of YouTube movie critic Chris Stuckmann, whose two million followers helped crowdfund this found-footage horror. With support from NEON and Mike Flanagan as executive producer, expectations were maybe not sky-high, but certainly for something intriguing.

Unfortunately, the result feels like a stitched-puzzle collage of borrowed ideas—part “The Blair Witch Project,” part “The Poughkeepsie Tapes,” a dash of “Hell House LLC,” and a hint of “Lake Mungo.” What’s missing here is an identity of its own.

The story follows Mia (Camille Sullivan), a woman obsessed with her vanished sister Riley (Sarah Durn), who disappeared mysteriously twelve years earlier.

It begins with a mockumentary perspective, the investigation into Riley’s disappearance promising eerie tension and emotional depth. Instead, it quickly collapses under repetition and confusion, turning into a conventional narrative that ends with a mix of techniques whose fusion never quite convinces.

Stuckmann uses every found-footage cliché: grainy tapes, cults, missing footage, ominous interviews, but never transforms them into something interesting or frightening.

The film starts strong, building a mystery that feels like it could lead somewhere. But after the first twenty minutes or so, the narrative flattens into a loop of empty theories and fake-outs.

By the time we reach the final act, hope for a satisfying resolution fades completely. The ending isn’t ambiguous in a clever way—it’s simply nonsensical, as if the film ran out of ideas but refused to stop rolling, jumping once again into something already seen.

I’m a big fan of films that leave questions unanswered or invite the audience to piece ambiguous moments together—it’s part of what makes found footage so thrilling. But here, there’s no logic behind the chaos.

It feels like a film made by someone who’s watched too many horror movies and tried to include everything he admired, without understanding why those elements worked in the first place.

What makes this even more disappointing is the potential behind the project. With a solid budget, a strong production team, and a passionate fanbase, “Shelby Oaks” could have been a breakout for Stuckmann. Instead, it plays like a patchwork experiment that mistakes imitation for homage.

Still, some credit is due: Stuckmann shows technical promise as a director. The cinematography captures an eerie atmosphere, and the performances—especially from Camille Sullivan—are surprisingly strong for a film so lost in its own mythology.

In the end, “Shelby Oaks” is proof that loving cinema and understanding its mechanics aren’t enough to bring a story to life.

Knowledge can inspire, but it can also paralyze creativity—and Stuckmann’s debut feels like a filmmaker still searching for his own voice in the shadows of the ones he’s studied for years.