Shelby Oaks

Paranormal Legacy

Shelby Oaks
Directed by Chris Stuckmann
USA 2024
Paper Street Pictures
UK Premiere FrightFest 2024 screening

I’m just going to preface this review with the simple statement that I thought this was a great horror movie. It’s also made on a shoestring budget on crowdfunded money (although it looks like Mike Flanagan picked it up) and those films have to be applauded when possible. The reason I’m saying this up front is because of something both the great Alan Jones and also the director, Chris Stuckmann, said before the film started (Stuckmann really wanted to be here for this screening but he and his family are recovering from flu so, sadly he recorded an introduction instead). Which was this... they both asked any social media commenters or reviewers to not discuss any of the secrets of the film... especially since it’s not getting any kind of release until next year.

Which is a perfectly reasonable request except... I can’t for the life of me figure out what the secrets of the film were supposed to be. It all follows a logical story progression with no real surprises. I mean, it doesn’t exactly telegraph itself like many movies do but it is fulfilling all the directions implied in its set up so... to avoid giving any spoilers here (I even changed my review title in case my silly pun gave away too much), I’m just going to cover the basic set up in terms of the story content of this thing. So, yeah, we’ll see how short this review turns out then, I guess.

Okay, so Shelby Oaks starts with some ‘found footage’ style horror of a group of four people, missing presumed deceased, who do a ghost hunt style YouTube channel (at the dawn of YouTube)... speculating on what happened to them and using footage from the one recovered camera (of two) used. One of the four is Riley (played by Sarah Durn). This is interpolated with documentary footage from 12 years later, with Riley’s sister Mia (played by Camille Sullivan) who is still trying to find out what happened to her sibling. This takes maybe ten minutes or so and then something genuinely unexpected happens, triggering the opening titles. Then the film, while still using excerpts of found footage, is filmed in the more traditional, third person narrative style, as Mia (half abandoned by her husband who sees her obsession tearing their marriage apart), tries to uncover just what happened when Riley and her group, the Paranoid Paranormals, went to investigate the abandoned town of Shelby Oaks.

And it’s genuinely terrifying. Or rather, the suspense and tension within most shots is absolutely, almost unbearably suspenseful. I mean, this is how you do atmosphere in a horror movie folks.. right here. The majority of the film is just Mia solo, figuring things out and driving out to follow up leads (for some reason always at night, to honour the unwritten horror trope of... ‘you never turn on the lights’) and so, the silent film making style works perfectly with the story. Not that this film is silent by a long chalk. As many people will realise, the sound design and scoring are very much contributing factors to a good horror movie and that’s certainly true of this production. The eerie, twig snapping, bump in the sonic distance modus operandi coupled with a highly anxiety inducing score from James Burkholder and The Newton Brothers (please release this on CD) absolutely ratchets everything up to eleven and works really well with the visuals to get under your skin.

And then there’s the acting... Camille Sullivan really helps carry this movie and she’s never less than believable the whole way through. And, even though Mia does, again in time honoured fashion, put herself in situations she shouldn’t, she’s also written and performed as someone who is working out things as she goes along and logically asking the right questions of herself in her investigations. And Sullivan really helps sell this character and her motivations all the way through the picture, allowing the film to get under your skin in the best way possible.

Oh, and about that ending (which I am not going to describe in any way)... yeah, as I said, you may not be completely surprised by the denouement of the film but, at the same time, it’s the perfect destination for where this story is going so, it doesn’t really matter how surprised you are by things (and you may well be... I’m sure you’re not all as jaded as me), because the ending does everything it needs to do, commenting on the characters and their ultimate fate.

So that’s me done with Shelby Oaks, a really good horror yarn and an absolutely ‘brilliant in every way’ debut feature from Stuckmann. I hope this one gets a mainstream release over here in the UK because I think people of a certain age are going to leave the cinema talking about it... which is a good thing.