Shelby Oaks

Shelby Oaks
Starring Camille Sullivan, Sarah Durn, Brendan Sexton III, Robin Bartlett
Directed by Chris Stuckmann

Back in 1999, "The Blair Witch Project" transformed the cinematic landscape and brought the found footage subgenre to the forefront with its impressive viral marketing campaign that was unlike anything done before, and the film itself was a unique story told through supposed found footage of three missing hikers thought dead in real life. Since then, imitators and inspirations have produced countless copies, and one such film is "Shelby Oaks" that takes the found footage subgenre and superimposes it with a natural story that, for the majority of the short runtime, pays off - but the ending takes a steep dive off a high cliff.

While investigating an abandoned prison in the small town of Shelby Oaks, Ohio, the cast of the YouTube ghost hunting show Paranormal Paranoids go missing, including their host Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn). Not long after, the bodies of the other cast members are found, but Riley is still missing. Twelve years later, her sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) hasn't given up the search, and after a man leaves a mysterious tape at her doorstep after killing himself, discovers that Riley could still be alive, and the clues could be right in front of her this entire time.

There's something to be said about a director's desire to craft something original, especially a first-timer. Chris Stuckmann - a YouTube film critic - is one such individual. Funding "Shelby Oaks" completely from a Kickstarter campaign, he managed to write and direct a decent little horror movie that pays homage to "The Blair Witch Project" even though it hits the pitfalls of generic horror movie storytelling, with an ending that felt like it condensed thirty minutes of story into a three minute shocker - which is amazing coming from a film critic who's been trained to notice novice mistakes like this.

The movie has a strong opening with a found footage format telling the story of Riley Brennan and her friends and their mysterious disappearance, along with a video found at the scene. So far, so "Blair Witch." Newscasters talk about the possibility of a hoax, and fans of the show share their misgivings over the disappearances. This is by and large a much more intriguing story than we get, which is an unfortunate consequence. It would've been a more interesting story of it was about Riley's disappearance being a scam then turning into something real as opposed to what we get which, to give it credit, isn't necessarily bad. Just repetitive of classic horror tropes and a rushed ending that probably should've elicited some sort of shock but all I did was go "huh?" 

After the opening montage the movie switches to a modern form of filming and again it's to the film's detriment, like watching someone watch "The Blair Witch Project" and try to decipher the clues themselves. Here, though, it's Riley's sister Mia who's scraping through the footage to find her sister when everyone else has given up hope. Her discoveries lead to something even more baffling: this is twelve years after Riley goes missing, and after only a few stops Mia discovers what really happened, all within her hometown. Even the teen Scooby Doo gang could've had that solved years earlier.

The mystery is fun to unravel, even if it's a bit too simple. It's not a shock to learn what eventually happened to Riley, but it's a fun adventure to get there, even though Mia has several flashbacks to their childhood that repeats itself a few times. It also doesn't help that Mia makes numerous mistakes that no rational person would: including investigating the abandoned prison on her own at night and not telling anyone where she's going. She could've easily gone in the daytime or with other people, but to build suspense and tension it's done at night.

The jump scares are numerous, as you'd expect, and most of the time it's earned enough that I wasn't bothered by them, nor was I scared (in fact, it takes a lot to jump scare me, and has only happened a few times in all the movies I've seen). Despite the generic nature of the movie you do sense the passion made behind getting it done, and the performances are decent enough, but mixing in overused tropes and a rushed ending shows that this first-time director has some major growth hurdles to overcome.

The Score: B+