Shelby Oaks (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – A woman’s desperate search for her long-lost sister falls into obsession upon realizing that the imaginary demon from their childhood may have been real.

My Take – With the critical & commercial success of Talk To Me (2022) actively establishing the Philippou brothers, most famously known as RackaRacka, as filmmakers to watch out for, more and more YouTube stars have begun their journey towards the big screen, with various projects currently underway.

The latest to follow this footsteps is YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann, who has swapped requesting viewers to like & subscribe, by stepping behind the camera in the hopes of terrifying audiences across the globe.

Originally launched on Kickstarter with the goal of raising $250,000, Stuckmann’s debut feature ended up raising $650,000, becoming the most-funded horror film on the platform. And following its world premiere at last year’s 28th Fantasia International Film Festival, it attracted the attention of Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House), who eventually became an executive producer, and indie distributor Neon (Longlegs, The Monkey), who also provided extra budget to refine and reportedly add more gore, before packaging it with yet another trademark marketing campaign as this year’s must-see horror film.

However, the final results, in my opinion, are somewhat mixed. Mainly as the film works like a compilation of horror’s greatest hits. Co-written by Samantha Elizabeth, Stuckmann’s life partner, there are familiar echoes of The Blair Witch Project (1999) & The Paranormal Activity films, to seminal horror flicks like Hereditary (2018) & the Insidious franchise.

But while Stuckmann thrives as a director in the found footage format, the moment he settles into the traditional approach, he ends up being only modestly successful.

Sure, it deliver scares, particularly in an eerie prison sequence, but the film’s final act simply collapses under the weight of its own ideas. Leaving us with a mish-mash of multiple derivative genre concepts, and at worst a bargain-bin knock-off, where even the most casual of horror fans can play spot-the-reference and rarely miss anything of consequence.

Nevertheless, as a directorial debut, this one is a sturdy effort from Stuckmann, who clearly understands the genre. Though the involvement of Neon and Mike Flanagan must have gone a long way, there’s strong evidence of potential talent to leave us excited for what’s next.

The story follows Mia (Camille Sullivan), who is still holding hope that her younger sister, Riley (Sarah Durn), is still alive. Seventeen years ago, paranormal investigator YouTubers Riley Brennan, Laura Tucker (Caisey Cole), David Reynolds (Eric Francis Melaragni), and Peter Bailey (Anthony Baldasare)—collectively known as the Paranormal Paranoids went missing while investigating a prison in the ghost town of Shelby Oaks, a wooded ruin in rural Ohio.

And though the bodies of Laura, David and Peter were found after a while, brutally murdered in a remote cabin, and one of their two cameras, containing footage of a terrified Riley, were recovered, with so much time passed and no news evidence in hand, the authorities and the world has largely moved on. That is until, a bizarre incident leads Mia to uncovering the missing camcorder footage that finally gives her the opportunity to pick up the pieces and find out what exactly happened to Riley.

Beginning effectively with an eerie and intriguing set-up, director Stuckmann does a competent job of simulating the style of a real true-crime documentary. Promising a sturdy and entertaining ghost story cleverly told in modern vernacular. But then, alas, a gnarly incident occurs while the documentary cameras are rolling and the narrative violently shifts gears.

The documentary conceit falls away and is replaced by a straightforward off-kilter horror. And the screenplay moves further away from its original conceit, it grows clunky and ever more derivative. While he does return to the found footage in a few later sequences, he never truly commits to the format, even though it’s a mode director Stuckmann probably should have stayed in, as the more cinematic and style-reliant, real-world narrative that follows proves far trickier.

Yes, he shows off a tremendous ability to unnerve audiences. Whether it’s some of the scares being in the background at first and moving around, or just the subject matter of demons and the occult, and there are some neat little stylistic flourishes that one can appreciate — a gliding camera here, a sudden switch from day to night there, yet we can’t help but feel like we have “been there, done that”.

Amid the multiple film formats and branching plotlines, Mia also feels underwritten and underdeveloped, and she’s not helped by the familiar horror trope of characters making terrible decisions, which rears its head so frequently that one might question the effectiveness of the terror at play, given its lead so often stumbles wholeheartedly into danger. Leaving it to the technical department to counterbalance its story-based stumbles.

As the film relies heavily on its physical locations like an abandoned psychiatric hospital, an abandoned amusement park, and a creepy forest to sell its story, cinematographer Andrew Scott Baird pull off some impressive visual tricks to heighten the scariest moments, which is further supported by Patrick Lawrence and Brett W. Bachman’s effective editing, and James Burkholder and the Newton Brothers’s eerie, genre-perfect score.

Performance wise, Camille Sullivan is quite impressive, despite Mia being a character who, for much of the film, is purely reactionary. But she also benefits from a solid supporting cast that includes Sarah Durn, Brendan Sexton III, Keith David, Derek Mears, Emily Bennett, Charlie Talbert, Robin Bartlett, and Michael Beach. On the whole, ‘Shelby Oaks‘ is a decent debut for director Chris Stuckmann who brings enough dread and terror to engage genre fans.