SHELBY OAKS
(director/writer: Chris Stuckmann; screenwriters: story by Samantha Liz & Stuckmann; cinematographer: Andrew Scott Baird; music: James Burkholder, The Newton Brothers; cast: Camille Sullivan (Mia), Brendan Sexton III (Robert, Mia’s husband, Keith David (Morton Jacobson, warden), Sarah Durn (Riley), Derek Mears (Tarion), Emily Bennett (Janet), Charlie Talbert (Wilson Miles), Robin Bartlett (Norma Miles), Michael Beach (Det. Burke); Runtime: 91; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Aaron B. Koontz, Cameron Burns, Ashleigh Sneed, Chris Stuckmann; Neon; 2024-Belgium/USA-in English)
“This Halloween film is no treat.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An opaque supernatural scare thriller that’s mainly funded by Kickstarter (collected $1.4 million in a Go Fund). It’s directed by first-timer Chris Stuckmann, a longtime YouTube film critic, who co-writes the screenplay based on the story he wrote with his wife Samantha Liz. It’s a derivative film, whose plot is built around ‘found footage’ and is filmed as a fake documentary.
The cheaply made atmospheric and haunting film is falsely being hawked in its recent TV ads by Neon before Halloween as a must-see Halloween film, but when unmasked there’s not much worth seeing in it that reminds you of the holiday.
Robert’s (Brendan Sexton III) wife Mia (Camille Sullivan) is obsessed with finding her younger sister Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), who never returned 12 years ago from a para-normal hunt with three of her online friends (who were found slaughtered) she knew from hosting on YouTube a show titled “Paranormal Paranoids.” Mia pursues her by following clues left on a cassette tape recording by her sister’s film crew, that’s mysteriously given to her by a suicidal stranger (Charlie Talbert). This leads Mia to the nearby fictional run-down ghost town of Shelby Oaks in Darke County, Ohio, that houses an abandoned Ohio State Reformatory, a haunted hotel and an abandoned theme park.
The lumbering and head-scratching search of Mia is documented by filmmakers of her crew until things come to an unwarranted abrupt ending.
The characters are not appealing, the acting is OK but amateurish, and it lacks imagination.
This Halloween film is no treat.
It played at the Fantasia Film Festival
REVIEWED ON 10/28/2025 GRADE: C
dennisschwartzreviews.com