Shelby Oaks: Movie Review

Cast: Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Sarah Durn, Keith David
Director: Chris Stuckmann

Wildly derivative in some ways and yet groundbreaking in others, Chris Stuckmann's debut film engages the horror senses and somehow still feels fresh despite being unable to sustain the suspense in the back half.

Revelling in its found footage at the start, it's the story of missing YouTuber Riley Brenan (Durn) who we first meet via a tape of her last known sighting. Telling the camera, she's not safe here, she promptly disappears for 12 years. A documentary crew picks up the story with her estranged sister Mia (Sullivan, who shoulders a lot of the proceedings with ease) as she pores over the details of her AWOL kin.

Riley presented a channel called Paranormal Paranoids with three others and had visited the old abandoned town of Shelby Oaks before they showed up dead and she vanished. So, after a shocking intervention, Mia starts her own hunt for her sister.

The opening of Shelby Oaks bristles with promise and a deft reinventing of the found footage documentary horror genre that really kicked into gear with The Blair Witch Project. As conspiracies, takedowns of YouTube culture and riffs of Netflix true crime documentaries all gel, the film promises to deliver so much before settling into a rote drama that bands the usual folk horror tropes in with plenty of shots of Mia reacting to offscreen happenings.

And yet, early on, it's terrifyingly effective, a chiller that is overwrought with tension and upsetting ideas. While a lot relies on Sullivan's reaction to what's around her, Stuckmann's story plays with some interesting ideas - from disbelieving partners to a long-nurtured terror.

But as is usual with many of these, the second half can't stand up with the weight of its own explanation and Shelby Oaks feels like a Halloween thrill that's too entangled in its own ideas of mythology and lore to do something fresh. Montages of investigations mesh with words and images from books that purport to explain everything - with Stuckmann forgetting that less is sometimes more in this genre.

And while the end crackles with Drag Me To Hell ideals and a twist, the journey's relatively enjoyable until it's not and the cards are all on the table as Mia behaves in ways that will have people screaming at the screen.

It's a mixed bag sure, but parts of Shelby Oak offer pristine terrors for this time of the year. It's just a shame the final elements couldn't keep it all together.