‘Shelby Oaks’ assessment: Hints of ‘The Blair Witch Challenge,’ ‘Lake Mungo,’ and ‘Barbarian’ via NewsFlicks

Can a perfect horror film be Frankensteined in combination from a laundry record of iconic ones? That is what I am left thinking about after observing Shelby Oaks, the promising and oft unnerving but in addition relatively scattered first function from widespread YouTube film reviewer Chris Stuckmann.

The film begins out convincing you it is something, however finds itself in fast succession to be an overly other beast altogether. From The Blair Witch Challenge to Martyrs to Barbarian and several other past that, Shelby Oaks does 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 vast. And, to ever so rather belabor the metaphor, probably the most coat suits excellent, whilst as a lot of it might use some extra subtle tailoring. 

Nonetheless, so far as Kickstarter-funded first options cross, Shelby Oaks is a huge, daring swing — albeit one produced via horror honcho Mike Flanagan, the person in the back of a swath of Netflix horror miniseries like The Haunting of Hill Space and The Fall of the Space of Usher. It is twisty as hell, bears some ace performances, and in point of fact presents audiences with some very sticky and really spooky pictures. Maximum of all, it marks the emergence of a horror filmmaker price keeping track of. 

Shelby Oaks blends The Blair Witch Challenge with Lake Mungo — and that’s the reason just the beginning.

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

It is an inch-long bounce from Riley’s tearful lament to Heather Donahue’s legendarily snotty apologia in The Blair Witch Challenge, the one who poetically mentioned, “I am scared to near my eyes, and I am scared to open them.”

Author-director Stuckmann anticipates his horror-loving target market will make this connection. However then he does one thing actually fascinating, pivoting from the found-footage conceit to a true-crime documentary framework. Jumping 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 looking for the reality of what took place within the woods of Shelby Oaks that night time. And she or he’s now starring in a true-crime documentary with the intention to reignite passion in relation to her lacking sister.  

For horror enthusiasts, this flip would possibly neatly recall Lake Mungo. Advised by means of talking-head interviews with the circle of relatives of the lacking blonde lady at its middle, the 2008 Australian horror movie unfurls its paranormal revelations piecemeal thru conversations and scattered bits of telephone video. Lake Mungo is actually a deeper minimize than The Blair Witch Challenge, however no quicker does Shelby Oaks settle into this faux-documentary conceit than Stuckmann pivots once more to a simple narrative movie. Smartly, it is as simple because the twisty likes of Hereditary or Barbarian.

Necessarily, Shelby Oaks maintains its forged, however ditches the documentary framework altogether, appearing us what’s “actually” going down — however thru artifice, forcing us to query what’s actual. The camerawork turns into stylized, with particular results and sluggish movement and close-ups; an competitive and manipulative rating takes over. The movie will shift from those narrative scenes to the documentary setup to chanced on pictures and again once more, maximizing this feeling of narrative disquiet.  

Those structural sleights of palms, like every excellent and right kind rug-pullings, are the place Shelby Oaks works its largest magic. Enjoying at the expectancies of horror diehards, Stuckmann manages to stay us on our feet, even discombobulated. We discover ourselves switching between missing-person chanced on pictures 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 document on a dime. This all builds up its personal form of disassociation inside the enjoy of observing it. 

Shelby Oaks is a hodgepodge of horror, from chanced on pictures to Satanic panic.

Credit score: Courtesy of Neon

In spite of those bold shifts, Shelby Oaks starts to really feel extra just like the portions of its sum and no longer vice versa. Stuckmann is motioning towards all of those different films to unmoor us, however the ones references regularly distract from the true plot and, in flip, undermine our funding in it. As an example, the casting of Brendan Sexton III as Mia’s husband proves distracting, despite the fact that he is terrific. An actor who is been killing it since Todd Solondz’s 1995 hit, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Sexton turns in but some other pretty, unhappy piece of labor right here. However you put him in opposition to a couple of scenes that happen within a haunted jail, and now all I am serious about is Consultation 9, Brad Anderson’s superbly creepy 2001 haunted jail film, the place Sexton made a mark as some of the asbestos cleaners who chanced on himself at the unsuitable finish of a few rusty psychiatric apparatus.

To what finish is that this? At what level do those Easter eggs crush? These types of allusions in the end get in the best way of Shelby Oaks status by itself and turning into in point of fact, deeply frightening. Stuckmann turns out very acutely aware of the precise second when his scares are meant to land, regularly to the purpose of self-consciousness. You’ll want to set a timer to when the item you are meant to be dreading will seem, and the feared factor will stick that mark each time. There are moments when a zag would’ve kicked the ass of a zig, however Stuckmann helps to keep on zigging, taking part in proper into horror gourmet expectancies. There may be actual, earned pressure, however the movie helps to keep deflating itself in spite of the thrill of its reality-shifting and the various superb go-for-broke performances therein. 

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

Credit score: Courtesy of Neon

An actor who is been nipping on the edges of popularity for 20 years, showing in TV displays from Darkish Angel to The Guy within the Top Fort, Camille Sullivan has lengthy confirmed a competent performer. And right here eventually she is given the highlight to profit from it. 

Even if Mia begins doing extremely silly issues that put her proper in hurt’s approach, Sullivan is in actuality devastating. She sells the hell out of dangerous possible choices, making it transparent that Mia’s an individual who would cross to any lengths to discover what took place to her liked sister. (And so long as we are speaking references, but even so this being the lead’s arc in that French Extremity vintage Martyrs, it is directly out of the terrifying 1988 Dutch mystery The Vanishing, too.) 

Sullivan nails large motion moments, like emotional blowups and freak-outs during which her palpable fright is legitimately tough to take a look at. However even the small moments give her alternatives to ship shivers. Simply watch the best way the flashlight trembles in her hand as she investigates that haunted jail, a delicate shift in frame language that communicates a bone-deep terror. It is the ones touches that lift the target market along Mia all the approach. 

Sarah Durn may be haunting as lacking lady Riley, who has to promote her undoing whilst staring off into house throughout the “naturalistic” found-footage parts of this film. Those are scenes we stay coming again to to peer extra of as, natch, extra pictures will get chanced on, and her haunted presence diffuses into each nook of the movie. As we all know from a long time of subpar found-footage films, it is not simple, this high-wire balancing act of giving a at ease and unprofessional-seeming efficiency below the ones constraints. Lots have failed spectacularly. However Durn makes us perceive why her sister may not let her cross 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 couple of realities of this tale. Even though Stuckmann must get a little bit bit out of his personal approach in any other spaces, he proves to be terrific together with his performers. Sullivan and Sexton percentage some very shifting moments in combination as they watch their marriage collapse within the face of tragedy. Michael Seashore wears a bone-deep exhaustion in his efficiency as the principle detective at the case, giving a lived-in sense of resignation on the gadget’s never-ending screw ups. And Keith David (the deep-voiced legend from The Factor and They Are living, amongst many) displays as much as Keith David it out of the park, taking part in the previous warden of that haunted jail who has noticed some shit and who, in conventional style, goes to colorfully monologue to you all about it. 

However easiest of all is the nice and notoriously underused Robin Bartlett. A kind of stalwart personality actors with a long time of stealing scenes below their belts (she’s been doing it since Heaven’s Gate in 1980, however I at all times first recall to mind her hilarious scenes across the dinner desk in Within Llewyn Davis each time I see her), Bartlett displays up and offers the film a last-act goose that takes it over the threshold into true unhinged horror-movie pride. Extra I will not and won’t damage, except for to mention that sure, that is the way you give Robin Bartlett her due. She finally ends up stealing — and in so doing, making — all the film.

Enjoying like a post-post-modern pastiche, an ouroboros of antecedents, and once in a while only a depraved stroll thru a nightmare wilderness, Shelby Oaks has sufficient gasoline in its tank for 10 films. That it once in a while seems like 10 films we have noticed earlier than is each a part of its bizarre ballsy allure and its scrappy undoing. In spite of everything, Shelby Oaks is a fight between Stuckmann’s many, many inspirations. However the gripping performances and massive swings in taste make for a film price its runtime. In spite of its faults, the directorial debut must end up a hell of a calling card for Chris Stuckmann as a brand new voice in horror. I will be able to’t wait to peer what he delivers to us subsequent.

Shelby Oaks is in theaters now.

UPDATE: Oct. 22, 2025, 5:29 p.m. EDT “Shelby Oaks” was once reviewed out of the Fantasia Global Movie Pageant. This text, at the beginning revealed July 31, 2024, has been up to date to incorporate the most recent viewing choices.