Is Shelby Oaks as bad as everyone says? Yes. Yes, it is. Thank you, goodnight!

Wait… you’re still here? Alright, then let’s get into it. The story of how Shelby Oaks came to be is not a completely unheard-of tale. Writer and director Chris Stuckman (a YouTube film critic and horror fan) made a few short films over the years and finally wrote a script for a feature. With the help of crowdfunding, Stuckman raised enough to make the film and attracted the attention of Mike Flanagan (yes, that guy), who came on as a producer. The film screened and then sat for about a year when NEON came into the picture to release the movie, fulfilling every horror fan’s dream of making their own film.

Are we all caught up? Good. Stuckman put together a pretty decent cast for this, with Camille Sullivan as Mia in the lead, a woman just trying to find her sister who has been missing for some number of years. Riley (Sarah Durn) was a YouTube personality for the online show Paranormal Paranoids (and look, I wish that wasn’t the name too) who goes missing along with her entire crew while investigating the abandoned town of Shelby Oaks. Detective Burke (Michael Beach) questions Mia after a rather shocking but not unpredictable moment in the opening minutes, setting her off on her journey, and it’s all very complicated. It isn’t as complicated as they made it seem though. There was a lot going on here.

The film starts out very much as a found-footage style horror romp (which I can get behind and have loved! Paranormal Activity was incredible, for instance), then transitions into more of a faux documentary. I still could have gotten behind that if the acting had been better from some of the participants. The point-for-point retelling of what happened by people who are meant to be actual relatives was informative and did fill in the backstory nicely, but the acting in those scenes took me completely out of it. The believability in that section was off-the-charts horrible. By the time it transitioned again into an actual film, it had already lost me.

That’s right. Shelby Oaks tried to be all three things at once, and possibly the saddest part was, when the movie dropped the documentary and found-footage aesthetic, it was actually pretty good. By far, the strongest sections were the segments of the film where it looked like an actual film. I could see that Stuckman actually possessed some respectable directing chops in those moments. His chops were still underdeveloped, sure. There were times when it all felt so very “try-hard,” adding insert shots at times when they were not at all needed (I’m looking at you here, shot of the coffee cup) and cutting away from things for the sake of artistic flair without earning those moments, but chops all the same. Stuckman may very well have a future in directing horror, so where did it all go wrong?

The writing. It’s really as simple as that: it comes down to the writing. The dialogue would go from clunky and wooden (exposition for the sake of exposition) directly to attempting to be profound or make situations sound more important by adding flourishes of vocabulary. In other words, using big words for the sake of sounding intelligent rather than trying to connect with the audience. It’s just another example of the film trying too hard. The movie worked best in the moments when Stuckman remembered that less is more.

I’ve talked before about the importance of the score in horror movies (any movie really) and how you want it to enhance and never overpower the film. Here, the score was kind of its own character, off doing whatever it wanted, and the movie suffered for it. I often found that the music choices which were made took me further and further out of the story. From string swells when we didn’t need them to hard stabs trying their best to catch us with a jump scare, it all felt so forced. Every aspect of this movie tried so hard that they missed the point. If any one person could have relaxed a little, the overall product could have thrived.

I don’t want to talk completely negatively about Shelby Oaks; not everything was awful. Camille Sullivan did do a pretty great job as Mia. She was fairly believable in her role, and I really felt like she wanted to find her sister. Though a lot of the choices she made were bonkers (again, the fault of the writing) and made me want to scream, I still wanted her to succeed.

Shelby Oaks is clearly a horror movie written and directed by a fan of horror. Chris Stuckman definitely has a love for the genre, and I think (at least for this film) that was the problem. He was trying so hard to make a great movie that everything felt too forced. A step back would have helped him see the bigger picture and maybe saved his idea from becoming a bit of a stain on the horror genre. The movie wanted to be good, he wanted it to be good, and he did way too much which largely comes back to his writing. Stuckman fell in love with his own script (which we all do) and forgot the reasons that he himself is into horror. I wonder how he would (as a critic) objectively review his own film?

Honestly, I think in the years to come, there are a great many lessons to be taken from this film. The first is that not every good idea is easy to get on screen, and screenwriting isn’t something everyone can do. Stuckman’s directing was fine, and I can see that improving over time, but I think if he wants to make movies that people can connect with, he needs to draw the line there. Sure, he could come up with compelling stories and ideas and plots… but then needs to let someone else write them. There’s no shame in that. Writer and director does sound good, but when one of them is holding you back from the success you could be having doing the thing you love, cut that part out.

I can’t really recommend this movie, not in good conscience, but if you are curious and want to see what could go wrong when you feel so strongly about something that you don’t take notes or feedback seriously, then it’s worth a shot. This film had a lot of great ideas, but it tried to be too many things. The found-footage and faux documentary sections weren’t needed, and there was a way to tell this same story without destroying the central concept. Shelby Oaks, if anything, is a cautionary tale for the world of horror cinema. More isn’t always an improvement. Sometimes, it’s just more, and that can ruin a project. Stuckman does have strengths, and if he leans into them, he will be just fine.