Shelby Oaks

This review is following a screening from Fantasia Festival and I realize that this is a first feature film and Chris seems like a nice guy but this was amateur hour.

I'll start with the positives, the cinematography was excellent and the lead actress was for the most part pretty credible. This film also had a promising prologue, although mostly riffing on Blair witch projects premise. Finally Keith David classed the joint up in a small role.

On the negative side, the relationship with the husband and lead was beyond poorly written, with a poorly acted argument sticking out in my memory. I was stunned when I was advised the husband is a working actor with many credits to his name.

The worst sin is that it's a horror film that just isn't scary, relying on cheap jumpscares and poor cgi dogs. The third act and ending also leave much to be desired where the audience was audibly laughing at what I would think were serious moments. The abysmal ending left me ambivalent rather than shocked as I imagine Chris intended. The biggest ruse is that this has been picked up for distribution, I can't see an average audience unfamiliar with Chris' YouTube career connecting with this film.

Great debut for Chris Stuckmann. It was an amazing movie experience from a first time writer director. His love for movie making is quite transparent in his piece. I'm reminded of the first time I watched Duel or Reservoir Dogs, being riveted and hooked from start to finish. The acting was flawless, the sound design was gripping and visually it was gorgeous with a special nod to the lighting department.

Very much looking forward from Chris Stuckmann's other projects that will now, surely, have much bigger budget to put to the big screen those stories he has been working on for years. Glad I got to shake the hand of a great movie lover like me that now many will get to love his movies as well.

I really thought this movie would be something different, but instead it follows a generic found footage movie. The budget considering being quite low for a film kinda shows.

The acting was passable but it's the directing and writing that really affects the movie. The plot just gets lost along the way and the pacing suffers.

As a horror movie fan if you're expecting to get scared, then this film will pile on more disappointment. I was hoping that Chris as a horror fan would understand the genre more and stray away from it's usual tropes, but nope his movies falls into typical stereotypes.

I guess being a decent critic doesn't mean you will automatically become a good director and it shows painfully throughout the entire runtime of the film.

Had to make an IMDB acct because I'm shocked at how bad this film is.

I will try to avoid talking about Chris and his recent display of lacking a spine when reviewing movies. So I will only say that my only explanation on why this is so terrible, is due to the fact that he HAD to know that this script was very flawled and decided to lay low on heavy criticism.

So, in this movie we follow a group of Youtubers who get involved in a missing person case in which the victim's sister believes this to be of supernatural causes rather than criminal or accidental.

This youtuber glamour of the movie is the one that worked best for me, however that's not really an amazing achievement considering how easy it is to replicate a Youtuber format, which is why the rest of the movie dreadful atmosphere loses steam by the time the 30 min mark has passed and proceeds to become a bellow average found footage film with a quality that you... might see on youtube...

Maybe if this film was released in youtube as some kind of ARG it would've gained more attention, not to say it would be good, but at least it would hold the suspension of disbelief, and it wouldn't feel like such an amateurish production.

I know Chris Stuckman won't grow a spine to talk about actual movie criticism, so I at least hope he grows a spine to see how awfully generic this was.

A YouTube content creator goes missing in the town of Shelby Oaks. Does her chilling last video clip contain the clues to the mystery of her disappearance?

It's not particularly unique but what it does, it does well.

I would have expected Shelby Oaks to be a blipvert, rapid fire absurdity for the TikTok generation but instead, it's a nicely paced, slow burn horror/thriller with some good touches and ideas.

The film looks very nice and performances are convincing. I saw the International Premier at FrightFest, London and it went down well.

It doesn't quite land the punches of genre movies, such as Sinister or Blair Witch Project but the viewing experience doesn't leave you feeling disappointed.

I don't think Stuckmann's name attached to this movie is going to affect its success one way or the other. The film stands on its own feet and will probably stick around for some years to come.