‘Shelby Oaks’ overview: Hints of ‘The Blair Witch Venture,’ ‘Lake Mungo,’ and ‘Barbarian’

Can an incredible horror film be Frankensteined collectively from a laundry checklist of iconic ones? That is what I am left pondering after watching Shelby Oaks, the promising and oft unnerving but in addition considerably scattered first function from well-liked YouTube film reviewer Chris Stuckmann.

The film begins out convincing you it is one factor, however reveals itself in fast succession to be a really totally different beast altogether. From The Blair Witch Venture to Martyrs to Barbarian and several other past that, Shelby Oaks would not simply put on its many style influences on its sleeves — it wears them on its chest and again and shoulders. It is a coat of many horror films, manufactured from cuts deep and broad. And, to ever so barely belabor the metaphor, among the coat suits good, whereas as a lot of it may use some extra refined tailoring. 

Nonetheless, so far as Kickstarter-funded first options go, Shelby Oaks is a giant, daring swing — albeit one produced by horror honcho Mike Flanagan, the person behind a swath of Netflix horror miniseries like The Haunting of Hill Home and The Fall of the Home of Usher. It is twisty as hell, bears some ace performances, and really presents audiences with some very sticky and really spooky photographs. Most of all, it marks the emergence of a horror filmmaker price maintaining a tally of. 

Shelby Oaks blends The Blair Witch Venture with Lake Mungo — and that is simply the beginning.

“Who took Riley Brennan?” is the query on the coronary heart of Shelby Oaks. The movie opens with the final identified little bit of footage of Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), YouTuber/ghost hunter, earlier than she went lacking within the titular city. Within the scene, she sits on a mattress in a cabin in the midst of the woods. She’s seen sobbing, completely terrified, saying into the digicam, “I am so scared.”

It is an inch-long leap from Riley’s tearful lament to Heather Donahue’s legendarily snotty apologia in The Blair Witch Venture, the one which poetically acknowledged, “I am scared to shut my eyes, and I am scared to open them.”

Author-director Stuckmann anticipates his horror-loving viewers will make this connection. However then he does one thing actually attention-grabbing, pivoting from the found-footage conceit to a true-crime documentary framework. Leaping to a decade or so after Riley’s disappearance, it seems that Riley’s older sister, Mia (Camille Sullivan), has spent the intervening years fruitlessly trying to find the reality of what occurred within the woods of Shelby Oaks that evening. And she or he’s now starring in a true-crime documentary in an effort to reignite curiosity within the case of her lacking sister.  

For horror fanatics, this flip would possibly effectively recall Lake Mungo. Instructed by way of talking-head interviews with the household of the lacking blonde woman at its heart, the 2008 Australian horror movie unfurls its paranormal revelations piecemeal by conversations and scattered bits of telephone video. Lake Mungo is admittedly a deeper lower than The Blair Witch Venture, however no sooner does Shelby Oaks settle into this faux-documentary conceit than Stuckmann pivots once more to a simple narrative movie. Properly, it is as simple because the twisty likes of Hereditary or Barbarian.

Basically, Shelby Oaks maintains its forged, however ditches the documentary framework altogether, displaying us what’s “actually” taking place — however by artifice, forcing us to query what’s actual. The camerawork turns into stylized, with particular results and sluggish movement and close-ups; an aggressive and manipulative rating takes over. The movie will shift from these narrative scenes to the documentary setup to discovered footage and again once more, maximizing this sense of narrative disquiet.  

These structural sleights of fingers, like all good and correct rug-pullings, are the place Shelby Oaks works its best magic. Taking part in on the expectations of horror diehards, Stuckmann manages to maintain us on our toes, even discombobulated. We discover ourselves switching between missing-person discovered footage to the cult horror of Hereditary with the twists and turns (and hidden underground caverns) of Martyrs and Barbarian, after which proper again to a talking-head true-crime doc on a dime. This all builds up its personal type of disassociation throughout the expertise of watching it. 

Shelby Oaks is a hodgepodge of horror, from discovered footage to Satanic panic.

Regardless of these daring shifts, Shelby Oaks begins to really feel extra just like the components of its sum and never vice versa. Stuckmann is motioning towards all of those different films to unmoor us, however these references typically distract from the precise plot and, in flip, undermine our funding in it. As an illustration, the casting of Brendan Sexton III as Mia’s husband proves distracting, despite the fact that he is terrific. An actor who’s been killing it since Todd Solondz’s 1995 hit, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Sexton turns in yet one more pretty, unhappy piece of labor right here. However you set him in opposition to a number of scenes that happen within a haunted jail, and now all I am excited about is Session 9, Brad Anderson’s fantastically creepy 2001 haunted jail film, the place Sexton made a mark as one of many asbestos cleaners who discovered himself on the flawed finish of some rusty psychiatric tools.

To what finish is that this? At what level do these Easter eggs overwhelm? All these allusions in the end get in the way in which of Shelby Oaks standing by itself and changing into really, deeply scary. Stuckmann appears very conscious of the precise second when his scares are alleged to land, typically to the purpose of self-consciousness. You may set a timer to when the factor you are alleged to be dreading will seem, and the dreaded factor will stick that mark each time. There are moments when a zag would’ve kicked the ass of a zig, however Stuckmann retains on zigging, taking part in proper into horror connoisseur expectations. There may be actual, earned rigidity, however the movie retains deflating itself regardless of the enjoyable of its reality-shifting and the various glorious go-for-broke performances therein. 

Camille Sullivan leads a forged that fights valiantly for Shelby Oaks. 

Credit score: Courtesy of Neon

An actor who’s been nipping on the edges of recognition for 20 years, showing in TV exhibits from Darkish Angel to The Man within the Excessive Fortress, Camille Sullivan has lengthy confirmed a dependable performer. And right here finally she is given the highlight to take advantage of it. 

Even when Mia begins doing extremely silly issues that put her proper in hurt’s means, Sullivan is genuinely devastating. She sells the hell out of unhealthy selections, making it clear that Mia’s an individual who would go to any lengths to uncover what occurred to her beloved sister. (And so long as we’re speaking references, apart from this being the lead’s arc in that French Extremity traditional Martyrs, it is straight out of the terrifying 1988 Dutch thriller The Vanishing, too.) 

Sullivan nails large motion moments, like emotional blowups and freak-outs during which her palpable fright is legitimately troublesome to have a look at. However even the small moments give her alternatives to ship shivers. Simply watch the way in which the flashlight trembles in her hand as she investigates that haunted jail, a refined shift in physique language that communicates a bone-deep terror. It is these touches that carry the viewers alongside Mia the whole means. 

Sarah Durn can be haunting as lacking woman Riley, who has to promote her undoing whereas staring off into area through the “naturalistic” found-footage parts of this film. These are scenes we hold coming again to to see extra of as, natch, extra footage will get discovered, and her haunted presence diffuses into each nook of the movie. As we all know from many years of subpar found-footage films, it is not straightforward, this high-wire balancing act of giving a relaxed and unprofessional-seeming efficiency underneath these constraints. Masses have failed spectacularly. However Durn makes us perceive why her sister will not let her go at the same time as everybody else has lengthy given up. She makes Riley our ghost, too.

The entire ensemble expertly submerges into the a number of realities of this story. Even when Stuckmann must get just a little bit out of his personal means in another areas, he proves to be terrific together with his performers. Sullivan and Sexton share some very transferring moments collectively as they watch their marriage crumble within the face of tragedy. Michael Seashore wears a bone-deep exhaustion in his efficiency as the principle detective on the case, giving a lived-in sense of resignation on the system’s countless failures. And Keith David (the deep-voiced legend from The Factor and They Dwell, amongst many) exhibits as much as Keith David it out of the park, taking part in the previous warden of that haunted jail who has seen some shit and who, in typical vogue, goes to colorfully monologue to you all about it. 

However better of all is the nice and notoriously underused Robin Bartlett. A kind of stalwart character actors with many years of stealing scenes underneath their belts (she’s been doing it since Heaven’s Gate in 1980, however I at all times first consider her hilarious scenes across the dinner desk in Inside Llewyn Davis at any time when I see her), Bartlett exhibits up and offers the film a last-act goose that takes it over the sting into true unhinged horror-movie delight. Extra I can’t and won’t spoil, besides to say that sure, that is the way you give Robin Bartlett her due. She finally ends up stealing — and in so doing, making — the whole film.

Taking part in like a post-post-modern pastiche, an ouroboros of antecedents, and generally only a depraved stroll by a nightmare wasteland, Shelby Oaks has sufficient fuel in its tank for 10 films. That it generally looks like 10 films we have seen earlier than is each a part of its bizarre ballsy attraction and its scrappy undoing. Ultimately, Shelby Oaks is a battle between Stuckmann’s many, many inspirations. However the gripping performances and massive swings in type make for a film price its runtime. Regardless of its faults, the directorial debut ought to show a hell of a calling card for Chris Stuckmann as a brand new voice in horror. I am unable to wait to see what he delivers to us subsequent.

Shelby Oaks is in theaters now.

UPDATE: Oct. 22, 2025, 5:29 p.m. EDT “Shelby Oaks” was reviewed out of the Fantasia Worldwide Movie Competition. This text, initially printed July 31, 2024, has been up to date to incorporate the newest viewing choices.