PLOT: A woman’s desperate search for her long-lost sister falls into obsession upon realizing that the imaginary demon from their childhood may have been real.
REVIEW: There was a lot of interest when Chris Stuckmann announced he’d be making a horror movie of his own after years of YouTube film criticism. The reviews coming out of Fantasia last year weren’t so great (check out Bumbray’s review of that cut HERE), but then Mike Flanagan stepped in to up the scares. Given that his name has been a stamp of horror goodness, I was immediately more interested. Does it result in a better movie? Well…
Shelby Oaks follows Mia as she looks for her sister, after she and her YouTube team have disappeared while filming for an episode in a mysterious abandoned town. The film is part found footage, with the opening giving us an investigative look at the disappearance of a group of YouTubers. Things get slightly more interesting once it shifts into a more traditional narrative, but there’s still a found footage presence throughout. It’s a fairly basic satanic story, that keeps things fairly abstract, even in its conclusion.
I found myself not caring at all for the characters at the center, which is a massive problem for me. They’re more just vessels for the investigation versus actual living, breathing human beings. It’s hard to get invested in what may or may not happen to them when they’re so bland and devoid of personality. It was nice to see Keith David pop up (any movie is better with his presence), but it doesn’t amount to much. It doesn’t help that, despite Stuckmann coming from the YouTube space, its inclusion is given an all too serious vibe, with far too much societal importance put upon what amounts to ghost hunters.
As a director, Stuckmann impresses with a great handling of how the story is presented and gets some good performances out of his cast. I was intrigued by the mystery of what happened to Riley. I also quite enjoyed the look of the old dilapidated prison (which is actually the same prison from Shawshank Redemption) as it has a ton of character. If anything, I feel like it’s not fully taken advantage of. Unfortunately, the story just doesn’t have enough juice, and it’s very lacking in the scares department. There’s a monstrous entity shown, and it gets far too much screentime. It may have worked if it were just a glimpse or two, but the entire third act is absolutely littered with it. It results in several unintentionally funny moments due to how melodramatic some elements are.
Can we please just get rid of CGI glowing eyes in movies? I hated them in the Salem’s Lot remake, and I hate them here. They don’t make things scarier; they just make things look stupid. There’s also a very weird CGI shot from outside the prison that made me feel like I was watching someone play a video game. The movie could have excised all instances of these things and been better off for it. Unfortunately, there are more CGI moments that completely drain the film of any seriousness. I guess I expected a more practical approach, given the found footage aesthetic. And I think the less said about the dogs, who happened to have way too much of an impact on the narrative, the better.
I was intrigued by Shelby Oaks at first, but it just gets more and more ridiculous as it goes on. The ending is one of the dumber ones in recent memory, and I struggle to find anything redeeming about it. You know how they say, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey? Well, when the destination is a giant mound of garbage, it makes the fun part of the journey dreadful in hindsight. I’m not dismissing Stuckmann as a filmmaker, as there is some stuff to like here. But the bad completely taints everything else.
Shelby Oaks is playing exclusively in theaters on October 24th, 2025.
The post Shelby Oaks Review: One Of The Year’s Worst Horror Films appeared first on JoBlo.
No comments:
Post a Comment