‘What happened to Riley Brennan?’
I should begin by saying I hardly ever watch YouTube. All of my film criticism and analysis comes from written media or podcasts. Therefore, I had no idea who Chris Stuckmann was before watching Shelby Oaks. Apparently, Stuckmann is a prominent YouTube film critic who funded this debut film through Kickstarter. While I’m all for crowd funding, and there are flashes of competenence here, Stuckmann is perhaps destined to follow in footsteps of many other film critics who have attempted to break into the filmmaking business and failed…
The plot is essentially a mish mash of other (better) found footage movies, most prominently Grave Encounters and Hell House LLC. Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), a paranormal influencer (made famous by YouTube, of course), goes missing whilst filming a video for her channel, Paranormal Paranoids (terrible name). Shelby Oaks follows the attempts of Mia (Camille Sullivan), Shelby’s older sister, to find her missing sibling and to solve the mystery behind her disappearance. Stuckmann also folds in some satanic ritual stuff (again, stolen from better, more imaginative movies).
The problem with Shelby Oaks isn’t the execution. It’s competently made and Stuckmann, unsurprisingly for someone so knowledgeable on the genre, knows how to construct a scare. No, the issue here is that there isn’t a shred of originality about any of it. All of horror is based around homage, heck, 2025 has been bookended by remakes of Nosferatu and Frankenstein, but a homage needs something more than just repeating the same stuff again, and Shelby Oaks doesn’t offer that. The film also suffers when it stops being found footage and starts becoming a traditional narrative horror, despite the best efforts of Sullivan whose performance is strong throughout.
Shelby Oaks isn’t terrible, but it too often feels like a competent cover version of much better and more original films. There is just enough to merit giving Stuckmann another shot, however, and I’d certainly be intrigued to see where he goes from here.
