In a year that has seen the Sinners franchise raise hell over Easter and Weapons target the late summer, the options for horror fans this Halloween are disappointingly scarce. Last week’s Elm Street-inspired sequel Black Phone 2 was a sign of a franchise already running out of steam, and this week’s low-budget offering, Shelby Oaks, tries and fails to kickstart a new one.
Directed by YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann, Shelby Oaks is a clumsy hodgepodge of found footage, mockumentary, and conventional narrative that never quite comes together. The film follows Mia (Camille Sullivan), whose sister Riley (Sarah Durn) disappeared years earlier while investigating a supposedly haunted ghost town. Mia’s search for answers just never sweeps the audience along, resulting in a remarkably flat and uninvolving trek.
Stuckmann, who funded the film through Kickstarter, seems more comfortable capturing the online world, and the opening mockumentary setup works slightly better. But the more cinematic, real-world narrative that follows proves far trickier, as Stuckmann desperately throws genre tropes and references at the wall in the hopes that something will stick. Sadly, it never coalesces into something cohesive or compelling, feeling like the clichéd work of someone who hasn’t found their own voice yet.
In contrast to the recent work of fellow YouTuber Curry Barker, whose debut feature Obsession premiered at the Toronto Film Festival to much acclaim, Shelby Oaks is embarrassingly underbaked and out of place. As Stuckmann lumbers toward a rushed and incoherent finale, it becomes clear that this is a horror film that should have stayed in the shadows.
Shelby Oaks is out in Australian cinemas on 23 October, US cinemas on 24 October, and in the UK on 31 October.