Crew
Director/Screenplay – Chris Stuckmann, Story – Samantha Elizabeth & Chris Stuckmann, Producers – Cameron Burns, Aaron B. Koontz, Ashleigh Snead & Chris Stuckmann,, Photography – Andrew Scott Baird, Music – James Burkholder & The Newton Brothers, Visual Effects – Ghost VFX (Supervisor – Matt Hansen) & HKGlobal (Supervisor – Bach Inn), Special Effects Supervisor – Schuyler White, Creature – Hamer FX, Makeup Effects – David Greathouse, Production Design – Christopher Hare. Production Company – Paper Street Pictures/Intrepid Pictures/HLBRK Entertainment/Title Media.
Cast
Camille Sullivan (Mia Brennan Walker), Sarah Durn (Riley Brennan), Robin Bartlett (Norma Miles), Brendan Sexton III (Robert Walker), Michael Beach (Detective Allen Burke), Keith David (Morton Jacobsen), Charlie Talbert (Wilson Miles), Eric Francis Melaragni (David Reynolds), Anthony Baldasare (Peter Bailey), Caisey Cole (Laura Tucker), Emily Bennett (Janet)
Plot
Seventeen years ago, four young people who ran the YouTube site Paranormal Paranoids went missing while investigating the ghost town of Shelby Oaks. The bodies of three of them were found but the fourth Riley Brennan is still missing. Riley’s sister Mia continues to mourn her. A man now turns up on Mia’s doorstep and shoots himself in the head. In his hand, she finds a videotape that contains the group’s last filmed footage as they investigated a prison. On the trail of Wilson Miles, a jailed prisoner who appears to be lurking on the tape, Mia sets out on her own to investigate the prison and Shelby Oaks. The search takes her deeper into the secrets of Riley’s disappearance.
Shelby Oaks was the directorial debut of Chris Stuckmann. Stuckmann began in 2009 as one of the first video reviewers on YouTube. He still publishes reviews usually under ten minutes in length and can be found at the channel under his own name, which has two million subscribers. He had made several short films before this. Shelby Oaks raised a budget of $650,000 via Kickstarter and was then picked by Aaron B. Koontz and his Paper Street Pictures company. The film comes with no less than Mike Flanagan listed as an executive producer.
As Shelby Oaks starts, it at once seems to be treading familiar paths and holds the promise of something more. The film’s first seventeen minutes tread only where The Blair Witch Project (1999) went before – the paranormal investigators armed with videocameras who go in search of something supernatural and disappear thing has become a cliché in Found Footage and been done in dozens of other films. On the other hand, Chris Stuckmann constantly suggests something elevated out of it. There are times the film becomes like a visual mystery with haunting clues half-seen inside stilled images and reflections, which suggests Shelby Oaks is going to be something more.
After seventeen minutes, we are jolted out of this as a mystery man appears on Camille Sullivan’s doorstep and shoots himself in the head as she answers the door. This certainly wakes the film up. Thereafter, Camille finds a tape in the man’s hand and the clues therein take her on a quest to find what happened to her sister. The mystery and the things encountered on the way – sinister happenings in a prison, symbols that tie into books on the occult, supernaturally empowered dogs – are all familiar stuff of the horror genre. However, the film holds your interest because Chris Stuckmann has an instinctive assurance in the handling of them. And secondly because the film is anchored by a very good performance from Camille Sullivan. Hers is a largely reactive role to what is happening around her or she is seeing but she emotes with great conviction.
The latter third of the film takes us to the town of Shelby Oaks. It is during these scenes that Camille Sullivan enters the house of the very creepy old lady Robin Bartlett and eventually finds out what happened to her sister. I won’t spoil the film’s surprises or answers to any of this. However, these scenes do quite convincingly create an atmosphere of dread and uncertainty – none the more so than the image of Robin Bartlett standing at the end of a corridor where the light seems to be reflecting off her eyes. The film also goes out on a more than effective final sting. On the basis of this, I would be more than happy to see what Chris Stuckmann does next.
Trailer here