Shelby Oaks felt like the kind of movie that has a lot of interesting things going on in it, and feels like a promising film, but doesn’t leave too much of an impression- to the point that I struggled to remember what happened in the movie when I sat down to write about it.
Strong Start
I don’t recall for which movie I said this about, but I really enjoy the documentary style of filmmaking in horror. It feels like strong, untapped potential that could bring a level of realism to the genre and make a film far scarier than it would have been if you went with a standard narrative.
So when Shelby Oaks began with a documentary, I got really hopeful. Throw in some paranormal hunters, and we get an excuse for lots of found footage fodder. Oh look, an abandoned town? Maybe some news reports, modern and vintage! Add in an investigative sister who wants answers? We got ourselves a horror documentary!
As if foreshadowed, only the first act was clever and inventive. After the background is set, we go back to the standard storytelling technique that every other movie uses. Which- fine. It’s not a sin. It’s a letdown, but the set up was strong enough that I wanted to keep going.
I loved that the film leaned on the idea that there was something outside the window, something barely visible, something that was staring into your room as you slept. It’s spooky! It made me search every window throughout the film, even though there weren’t too many moments where there was something spooky waiting outside.
Twists and Turns for the Sake of Twists and Turns
After the first act of the movie, around when things got standard, Shelby Oaks fell into a lull:
A woman who’s being haunted and her husband doesn’t believe her.
A mysterious disappearance.
A library with an occult book with answers.
At one point the lady hops into a car in the middle of the night and drives all the way to an abandoned prison to investigate. Then, a dog randomly appears and leads her to where her sister is being held. A convenient photo album of crime explains what’s happened to her. Bing bang boom, without any real cleverness or struggle, she frees her sister and they escape.
I think that the plot, which involved a cult possessing a man, who then kidnapped a girl, and then was imprisoned, and then freed, and then committed suicide, and also delivered key information to our protagonist, but was definitely a murderer, was contrived. The tension of spooky ‘shit in the window’ was completely deflated when it turned out that the big bad climax was just an ugly redneck woman living in a cabin with a chained up woman in her basement. Yeah, a cult is a reasonable explanation for why someone’s being haunted by a goat-headed ghoul, but it didn’t connect, and the ending didn’t feel truly climactic.
The result was that Shelby Oaks ends on a deflated note, and unfortunately falls under the category of ‘run of the mill’, despite showing very strong potential in the beginning.
YouTube Filmmakers
A final note about this film regards its filmmakers. Shelby Oaks was written and directed by Chris Stuckmann, who crowded funded the film on Kickstarter, and put together a guerrilla marketing campaign on YouTube that later was woven into the film. There was even a very fun Twitter account (or two) that was roleplaying as people investigating the mystery of Shelby Oaks.
It seemed clear that Stuckmann was not only dedicated to his project, but was having a lot of fun with it too. Stuckmann, as you may recognize, got his footing in the media world through his YouTube channel. The guy has a deep catalogue of videos talking about movies, and seems to run in parallel with some of my favorite channels that I linked in my Movie Analysis page.
I just want to commend Stuckmann for sticking to it, man. The guy loves movies, knows what he’s doing, and made a solid effort in his debut. Will his next movie be better? I hope so. I could see the bones of really good horror in this film, and I think that, with a more cohesive and coherent plot, he’s got the potential to make some really creepy films. I feel an affinity for him as a fellow movie reviewer with movie making aspirations. He’s done something special with this movie in terms of effort and accomplishment, and I think he’d benefit from a solid group of contributors who he trusts to cut into his authority over his projects.
That said, another YouTuber, Kane Parsons, has been all over the news as of the writing of this article for his successful film Backrooms. I witnessed the online debacle that was Markiplier’s Iron Lung. I already have tickets for the former, and maybe I should make it a double feature by watching the latter and writing about YouTubers as filmmakers. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Maybe there’s someone staring at you from outside your window.
I rate Shelby Oaks
YMMV
I watched Shelby Oaks on Hulu.
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