All I want is to be scared. Is that too much to ask?
In the case of Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, it isn’t, since I spent more than half the film’s run time with knots in my stomach.
Here’s the log line: In Shelby Oaks, 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.
As I mentioned, when I watch a horror movie, all I really want is to be scared. I know that there are some folks who are looking for subtext or that whole elevated horror genre, which is absolutely fine; but me, what I’m always desperate for is that tension and nervous feeling, the fear running through me that when I’m sitting at home, I have to text a friend because I’m just that scared.
Shelby Oaks delivered that for me, as it veered into a few different sub-genres all in one film; there’s found footage, paranormal storytelling, and good old demons. This potpourri shouldn’t work in theory, but for me, it absolutely did. Much of the film’s strength rests on Camille Sullivan’s stellar performance as Mia Brennan-Walker, a woman who believes her sister Riley (Sarah Durn), a ghost hunter who went missing 11 years earlier, is still out there, waiting to be found.
But alongside Sullivan’s compelling performance is a general sense of unease throughout Shelby Oaks, courtesy of first-time director Stuckmann. We’ve seen a lot of the movie’s roots in other films – abandoned prisons, treacherous underground hallways, demons manifest – but never quite in this way before. At least, I haven’t seen it. What I do know is that, with this combination of tropes, I haven’t been as scared watching a film lately as I was watching Shelby Oaks.
Shelby Oaks is available now on Blu-ray and VOD.
