Terror em Shelby Oaks

High hopes dashes away midway through film. It started off with a uniquely fresh approach to telling the story, but fell into the cliche of brave person falling in the trappings of a common horror movie. There's a lot of scenes that made no sense that the only conclusion is exactly how most horror films with a supernatural villain ends. The protagonist's conviction after 12 years has finally waned when presented a means to her true desire - succumbs to temptation. A solid 7 for the unique, ala dateline NBC news segment style film intro. 7 for the good actors. An awful 1 score for the predictable ending which diluted the effectiveness of the scare score of 3. See it if you dare sit through another frustratingly cliche horror film.

The irony here of a movie "critic" Writing and directing a movie this bad cannot be lost on him.

Boring doesn't even begin to describe the experience of watching... tolerating this vanity project.

The static camera in every scenes, I don't know how big the camera was that they used I'm pretty sure it would pan a room.

The dialogue is generic and cliched, you've heard every line from this "movie" before.

There are no scares or chills and the "monster" is so unimaginative it's almost laughable.

It gets a 3 stars because it did one thing I liked, it didn't use jump scare sound effects where you expect them.

Valiant effort.

I wasn't familiar with The Paranoid Paranormal YouTube show until waiting in line for the screening, but the IYKYK vibe I'd then hoped for didn't even pay off (or maybe it did? Some true fan please tell me it did.)

It really seemed to sputter and burn out in the third act where what was intriguingly setup prior to felt crudely resolved like quickly gathered horror-trope loose ends of recent memory.

Did they hold off on some unused footage reserved for a hopeful sequel? Or simply telling Chris that selling his soul now will get him something better in the future?

Whatever it is, I respect how he got this made and the commitment to a longer form creative project like this - and I'm still intrigued to see what he does next.

I went to see Shelby Oaks on 10/24/25, which was the first day of its theatrical run. I was alone at my screening.

I went because I love horror. The movie's premise reads like something you'd read for any random horror movie on the Tubi app: a woman goes missing while she investigates the paranormal, and her sister tries to find her. It's an extremely basic, cliched, un-original premise for a horror. But I was fine with it because, again, I like horror (I even enjoy those Tubi original horror flicks even!)

But in the end, I hated this movie

There are so many issues that I can rattle off -- the first, which might be most conspicious, is that the lead actress is way too old for the role; she looks more like a distressed mother than a sister. She and her missing sister Riley look nothing alike. They do not pass as sisters

In addition - the movie has an awkward construction. It starts off in a documentary fashion, as if it were a found-footage film. Then when the main character Mia goes out to look for the missing sister, the documentary/found-footage perspective goes away entirely. This jump in presentation, from found-footage to conventional, is simply weird and puzzling; and I'm not sure what the point is. The movie could have easily been made as one or the other. It could've been told as a complete found-footage or a conventional movie.

Some of the plot details don't work. The girl had been missing for 12 years, and in spite of all the police work and publicity, nobody else could spot the details that Mia does when she watches her sister's old videos ... the character Mia has a husband who serves no purpose in the movie (infact, I actually think they should have scrapped his character entirely to give the sense that Mia had nobody else but her sister) ... when Mia goes out into the woods to look for her sister, she bizarrely goes out by herself. What happened to the documentary crew? That Mia is alone means that she wanders about in silence, which becomes a drag. Having someone to talk to might've made these scenes a bit more lively. I found myself yawning and getting restless during that part ... the movie's ending is unsatisfying

The only positive is that some scenes are visually well-done, and there's even one really creepy scene involving a photo album. But they're not enough to make up for the film's many shortcomings

3.5/10.

I don't care for Chris Stuckman's YouTube presence or for most of those influencer folks because rarely do they set their subjective bias aside when talking about movies, but I was immediately intrigued by his feature film debut because Mike Flanagan is an EP and the indie circuit buzz was exciting. Having finally seen it, it's not an impressive film.

The first half is thoroughly captivating as we're pulled into a bizarre mystery that defies reason, but the second half is just a hodgepodge of horror cliches and missteps. It's worth a look for hardcore horror fans, but otherwise, Shelby Oaks isn't a must-see in any regard.