Shelby Oaks will open in theaters at a date TBD. This review is based on a screening at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival. YouTuber Chris Stuckmann isn’t breaking new ground by making a feature film.
With his promising yet uneven feature debut, Shelby Oaks, he joins a long tradition of film critics becoming filmmakers – just looking at recent horror history, Sinister screenwriter C. Robert Cargill and Attack the Block director Joe Cornish are relevant comparisons. What sets Stuckman apart is his chosen platform, where he’s amassed over 2 million followers across 13 years (and counting – as of this writing, there’s a Twisters review at the top of his channel’s feed) of video reviews.
And his online experience is evident in the way Shelby Oaks accurately evokes the spooky world of paranormal YouTubers. Stuckmann is not a Hollywood insider: Shelby Oaks’ $1.4 million budget was raised on Kickstarter, and the film was shot and is set in the director’s home state of Ohio.
That being said, it sailed into its world premiere at Fantasia on a wave of buzz. That’s thanks to executive producer Mike Flanagan and Neon, which announced a Shelby Oaks theatrical run days before the distributor's much-hyped launch of Oz Perkins’ serial-killer shocker Longlegs . Neon is currently building a brand identity around cryptic marketing for horror movies that do creative things within genre conventions, and Shelby Oaks fits this brief.
To be totally transparent, the Neo.