{"id":13305,"date":"2025-10-25T22:01:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T02:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13305"},"modified":"2025-11-11T11:57:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:57:31","slug":"shelby-oaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/10\/25\/shelby-oaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelby Oaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Shelby Oaks<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neon\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violent content\/gore, suicide, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Chris Stuckmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chris Stuckmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: James Burkholder and The Newton Brothers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrew Scott Baird\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Release date: October 24, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Michael Beach, Sarah Durn, Robin Bartlett, Keith David, Charlie Talbert, Eric Francis Melaragni, Anthony Baldasare, Caisey Cole, Lauren Ashley Berry, Derek Mears, Brenna Sherman, Sloane Burkett.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0What\u2019s worse, a bad movie or a frustrating one? I\u2019d have to say the latter. A bad movie is a bad movie through and through (e.g. Hurry Up Tomorrow). A frustrating movie, on the other hand, starts off strong but fails to deliver on its promise. It\u2019s aggravating when this happens.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The new horror film Shelby Oaks<\/strong> comes out of the gate strong with one of the best openings I\u2019ve seen in a long time. It establishes itself as a hybrid of mockumentary and found footage in laying out the events surrounding the disappearance of Riley (Durn), a YouTuber who leads a group of ghost hunters known as the \u201cParanormal Paranoids\u201d. They investigate all sorts of weird, spooky stuff. In 2008, all four of them went missing after doing a piece at an abandoned prison. Shortly thereafter, all but Riley are found murdered. What happened to her?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Riley\u2019s sister Mia (Sullivan, The Marine 3) wants answers. She\u2019s been looking for Riley for the past 12 years. She tells the story to a film crew shooting a documentary about the case. We see clips of the interviews and the last known footage of Riley and the others. Then out of nowhere, a mysterious man (Talbert) shows up at Mia\u2019s front door and apologizes before shooting himself in the head. In his hand, he holds a tape containing previously unseen footage of Riley\u2019s disappearance. It leads Mia to the nearby abandoned town of Shelby Oaks where she hopes to finally solve the mystery of Riley\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shelby Oaks<\/strong> marks the directorial debut of Chris Stuckmann, a YouTube film critic who clearly loves the horror genre. The set-up, a mish-mash of styles (pseudo-doc, found footage), is solid. It brings to mind titles like The Blair Witch Project and Lake Mungo. As the film progresses, it borrows ideas from Session 9, Silent Hill, Hereditary and Rosemary\u2019s Baby. It\u2019s pretty good for a while. It seems to be heading towards something truly terrifying. Then it peters out with a disappointing third act. When we find out what\u2019s what, it\u2019s hardly what I\u2019d call awesome. It\u2019s more like a \u201cwhat, that\u2019s it?\u201d kind of thing. You\u2019d think Stuckmann, who also wrote the screenplay, could come up with something better.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shelby Oaks<\/strong> has this cool low-budget vibe going for it. It\u2019s an independent film all the way. It doesn\u2019t rely on CGI or star power to get by. It has some CGI in it, none of it terribly convincing, but it doesn\u2019t overdo it. The scares come more from sudden noises and fuzzy ghostly figures seen lurking in the background in the old video footage. As for the cast, there are a few familiar names like Brendan Sexton III (Boys Don\u2019t Cry) as Mia\u2019s unsupportive husband, Michael Beach (Saw X) as a detective, Keith David (They Live) as a prison warden and Robin Bartlett (Deceived) as a crazy old lady. Derek Mears, known to horror fans for playing Jason in the 2009 Friday the 13th<\/sup> remake, shows up as….. I\u2019m not telling. You\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting in Shelby Oaks<\/strong> is about what you\u2019d expect. It\u2019s not Oscar-level stuff, but it\u2019s not rock bottom either. The actors give the kinds of performances required by the material. Bartlett gives viewers the creeps with her greasy-haired hermit character who might be connected to the case. Keith David has only one scene, but it\u2019s enough for me to know I want a spin-off movie featuring his character. There\u2019s another story there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shelby Oaks<\/strong> has chills and plenty of atmosphere. It even has a couple of decent \u201cBOO!\u201d scenes. It\u2019s really a pretty good flick. And that\u2019s the real tragedy here. It could have been great if Stuckmann had stuck the landing. It\u2019s not a terrible ending; it just doesn\u2019t live up to the promise of its opening. To its credit, it\u2019s not a great big put-on like Blair Witch. Stuff actually happens. In any event, Stuckmann is a filmmaker to keep an eye on. He shows definite promise with this flawed but interesting first effort.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shelby Oaks (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neon\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violent content\/gore, suicide, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Chris Stuckmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chris Stuckmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: James Burkholder and The Newton Brothers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrew Scott Baird\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Release date: October 24, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Michael Beach, Sarah Durn, Robin Bartlett, Keith David, Charlie Talbert, Eric Francis Melaragni, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Shelby-Oaks-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13305"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13310,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13305\/revisions\/13310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}