Shelby Oaks (2024)
Shelby Oaks | Falls Short Of The Hype
Written by Noah Dietz: 4/22/2026
I, like many others, became aware of Shelby Oaks during what I would call a wildfire period of advertisement. The trailers, many of them cut together with images that don’t appear in the film proper, promised a chilling and brutal adventure. Coming in at roughly 78 minutes sans the 12 minutes of credits featuring the crowdfunding backers, I was excited to see just what was coming. Stuckmann isn’t a creator I was familiar with until this point, so I had no feelings for or against him. After the wide release, I did start to hear some mixed opinions on the film, with friends and critics I trust saying they didn’t quite enjoy it. Shelving it until it hit streaming, I’ve now made time to see it myself so I can make the authoritative proclamation of: It’s fine.
Opening with a documentary-style intro, Shelby Oaks managed to hook me. I was interested in the story being told about the “Paranormal Paranoids” vanishing after visiting the abandoned titular town. Right up until the switch away from found footage I was sold. Camille Sullivan was doing a great job as Riley’s (Sarah Durn) sister, Mia, and I was ready to enjoy an investigative angle to the whole thing. And while I wasn’t fully sure if I was thrilled about how we were moving in the traditional footage switch, the front of the film was still something that I enjoyed seeing. The film was well shot, the story was a little sparse, but I was expecting things to pick up so I wasn’t too worried. I don’t even mind demon plots, so much of this was up my alley. I found the concept of our opening antagonist Wilson Miles (Charlie Talbert) being a rotting cancer wherever he went to be really strong. The idea of a demon’s hand on your life not necessarily affecting you, but having a marked effect on the world around you was compelling. I was even willing to give a potential pass to the meandering middle of the film, because I was sure it would all come together as the final plot points revealed themselves. There was a lot here that I was conceptually into, but the final act of the film is where the experience fell apart.
Complete spoilers for the ending plot points of the film:
I do not care for a male writer who has little professional experience tackling a story where infertility is a plot point. Much like Stephen King and his tendency to tell stories about “blooming womanhood,” it always comes off as more uncomfortable than anything else. Speaking about a scene that directly leads to the death of Riley, the character the entire film has revolved around rescuing, Stuckmann had this to say to The Hollywood Reporter: “Mia — who’s blinded by the allure of a newborn who’s long eluded her and her husband — doesn’t heed Riley’s warning about the nature of the child …” From the same interview Stuckmann says, “Tarion (the demon) got his desired outcome, one where the infertile Mia raises the cursed baby as her own.” You could see it as the dark twist it was clearly intended to be, you could see it as a rug pull, but coming from a man, I can’t help but find it to be an incredibly uncomfortable kind of commentary on the vulnerability and value of women. Riley’s late film reveal is that she’s been ritualistically sexually assaulted nonstop since her disappearance twelve years ago. This plot point is revealed while flipping through a photo album, but its significance, while clearly meant to be horrifying, is immediately brushed past. Mia pushes forward with zero regard to her sister’s trauma and the facts of the world they’re in, all because she wants her sister's baby.
I understand this point could come off as nitpicking, and that’s not what I’m trying to do. I have no desire to pick apart miniscule issues with a director’s first feature-length film, especially one that’s so close to managing to do … something. But when this is the only resonant plot point of the entire film, and the rest of the experience is a pretty-to-look-at-but-rather-vapid experience, it’s not something I can sit and overlook. I don’t even think I’d be as put off by the ending if there was simply more to the story, but there isn’t. Another writer, somebody who is more experienced, should have taken a look at this script. Somebody to come in and say that there are elements of this that could be done better, elements that should be changed, and darlings that needed to be killed.
It doesn’t matter how good a movie looks if there isn’t a decent story to prop up. Using women’s trauma as a tool to shock is something that takes a deft hand to pull off, and it’s not one that Stuckmann has at this time. Additionally, while well shot, it’s hard to not feel like the most inspired portions of the film were in the documentary-style sections. There’s a moment when we’re visiting an abandoned prison that a voiceover from a previous scene plays, with footage cut in that referenced the cell we were at. If we hadn’t had the doc-style intro, it would have just seemed corny. Since we did have it, instead it just feels like all the good ideas for the film were tied to that 15-minute intro and nothing else. I understand the attempt to keep from falling into the perceived trap of breaking into horror as a found footage creator from being a YouTuber. There’s obvious reasons to avoid this, even if most of it is based fully around perception. I wish he had stuck with that line of work though, because it’s clearly where he’s more inspired to work, even if he doesn’t realize it.
Unfortunately for all of its hype, at the end of the day Shelby Oaks lands squarely in the realm of fine rather than it being a truly strong first outing.
Film: Shelby Oaks
Director: Chris Stuckmann
Writers: Chris Stuckmann
Release Year: 2024
Rating: 2/5
While Chris Stuckmann’s feature debut demonic thriller is competently made, it’s hard not to feel like it suffers from issues with its writing: too much slow, and not enough burn.