SHELBY OAKS

Producers: Aaron B. Koontz, Cameron Burns, Ashleigh Sneed and Chris Stuckmann   Director: Chris Stuckmann   Screenplay: Chris Stuckmann   Cast: Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Keith David, Sarah Durn, Charlie Talbert, Robin Bartlett, Anthony Baldasare, Caisey Cole, Eric Francis Melagragni, Emily Bennett, Derek Mears, Rob Grant and Michael Beach   Distributor: Neon

Grade: C-

Chris Stuckmann, who’s won some fame as a YouTube influencer and movie reviewer, tries his hand at feature filmmaking with this horror flick.  As Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” reminds us, many of the famed directors of that influential French cinematic movement were former film critics, so in that respect Stuckmann is in good company.  Unhappily, “Shelby Oaks” proves he’s not in their league.

The movie starts out as a found-footage thriller involving a quartet of ghost hunters who call themselves the Paranormal Paranoids; they disappear while looking for answers in the eponymous ghost town located in Darke County, Ohio, where they visit an abandoned amusement park and a deserted prison.  Many online commentators dismiss their disappearance as a clumsy publicity stunt, but soon the bodies of three of them, Peter (Anthony Baldasare), Laura (Caisey Cole), and David (Eric Francis Melagragni), are found.  The fate of their leader, spunky Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), however, remains a mystery; grainy footage in one of the group’s cameras shows the terrified girl sitting on a bed in a ramshackle house before peeking out into a dark hallway where she’s heard ominous sounds.  There the footage ends.

Cut to 2020, twelve years after the group’s misadventure. Riley’s sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) is explaining to a documentary filmmaker her determination to continue searching for her sister, despite the misgivings of her husband (Brendan Sexton III); shockingly a wild-eyed man (Charlie Talbert) shows up at Mia’s door, clutching a video cassette and a gun, with which he abruptly shoots himself in the head.  The tape contains footage of the searches Riley and her colleagues were conducting in the environs of Shelby Oaks just before they were killed—or, in Riley’s case, perhaps abducted.

Mia explains that ever since childhood Riley had been convinced that she was being stalked by some malignant creature that scratched at her bedroom window in the night; could that creature be behind what happened at Shelby Oaks?  Closer inspection of the footage of Riley’s last known moments has revealed some suggestive details. 

To find out the truth, Mia retraces her sister’s steps and, after identifying the suicide, a man named Wilson Miles, as a former inmate of the prison, she interviews both the police detective (Michael Beach) who headed the original investigation and the former warden (Keith David). She also visits the shuttered prison, where she encounters a growling dog, and the surrounding woods, where she finds not only the dog but signs of Satanic activity.  Finally she stumbles upon an isolated house where an elderly woman named Norma (Robin Bartlett) invites her in for crackers and tea.  What transpires there might be described as “Rosemary’s Baby” transposed to “Blair Witch” territory, followed by a coda reemphasizing Mia’s earlier hope to become a mother as well as Riley’s fears about being stalked by some demonic entity.

“Shelby Oaks” doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, and one can waste a good deal of time scrutinizing its logical lapses; but that’s a common failing in horror movies, and genre fans are a forgiving bunch.  What they’re less likely to tolerate is a lumbering pace and a lack of genuine scares.  Stuckmann manages a few jolts, like the suicide scene, although it’s hard to judge whether the credit goes to him or to Mike Flanagan, who reportedly helped to spruce up the movie, shot a few years back, for commercial release. 

But overall the movie is slackly paced, with entirely too many draggy scenes of Mia stumbling about in the dark, flashlight in hand.  (The editing is credited to Patrick Lawrence and Brett W, Bachman.)  The score by James Burkholder and The Newton Boys tries to ramp up the feeling of dread, but to no avail.  And Stuckmann relies too heavily on overly familiar horror tropes.  The jumbled use of documentary, found footage and straight narrative formats doesn’t help matters either.

Nor does the execution.  While the picture doesn’t look bad for a movie bankrolled by a Kickstarter campaign (a fact that explains the ludicrously long list of executive and co-producers in the final credits—as well as a guaranteed audience)—the location choices are evocative, and cinematographer Andrew Scott Baird uses them decently, the grainy “old” video footage especially well caught, even if some of the payoff scenes at the end are terribly murky.  The acting, even by the established veterans, is at best adequate, with Sullivan rather stilted throughout.  The standout is Bartlett, who does much with very little, though some of her scenes will elicit giggles for their chintziness.

Those who’ve enjoyed Stuckmann’s YouTube work might also enjoy “Shelby Oaks.”  But anyone acquainted with horror movies will recognize that in making it Stuckmann has acted like the hounds of hell it features, ravenously chowing down on the genre’s clichés and then just repurposing them to his own mediocre ends. The result is a rather torpid collection of overused tropes that isn’t redeemed by the director’s decision to jump around from one storytelling format to another.