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Jumbled and Awkward though Modestly Spooky Debut

I’ve been in the online movie space for a long time, and so it would be impossible for me to not be at least mildly familiar with Chris Stuckmann. For well over a decade he has been among the most popular movie reviewers on YouTube, and indeed I did watch his videos back when it was a genre I was invested in (I may have even been subscribed for a time). I’d vaguely heard he was interested in making movies himself, yet it’s still a little surreal to see that come to fruition. You don’t often see people anymore make that leap from popular film critic to filmmaker. Stuckmann did, and though he’s a critic I’ve often disagreed with, I’m happy for him, and was very curious about his debut, a horror movie now released after a very long production period, called Shelby Oaks.
It is a micro-budget independent feature, crowdfunded as many a YouTuber project is, and shot entirely in Stuckmann’s home state of Ohio. It was completed and saw its first festival appearances more than a year ago, but the support of Mike Flanagan resulted in its being re-edited and some sequences re-shot for the benefit of wider distribution. And I can’t say that is not a benefit -the professionalism on display through some of its sequences certainly speaks to a bit of outside help and resources. And yet in spite of that, the movie does still feel rough.
It starts fairly strongly -at least conceptually, setting context through a mix of faux documentary and found-footage film detailing the 2008 disappearance of Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), host of a YouTube paranormal investigation series called "Paranormal Paranoids”, while camping out with her colleagues in the ghost town of Shelby Oaks. Her friends were found brutally murdered but she had vanished without a trace.  Footage off of the single camera found at the scene cryptically showed Riley deeply afraid of something coming after her. Twelve years later her sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) is still haunted by what happened, and determined in her faith that Riley is still alive. The bulk of the movie, presented in a more straightforward fashion, follows Mia’s own investigation in the aftermath of a stranger killing himself at her door and leaving her with a tape providing further clues into what might have happened to Riley -potentially linked to Riley’s frequent childhood night terrors of a creature watching her from the window.
That prologue, which takes up about the first twenty minutes of the film, is quite a good imitation of true crime documentaries and the addictive culture around them, Stuckmann doing well to emphasize the mystery and sense of conspiracy they are often designed to propagate -something that comes off even more believably by the fact his actors are all fairly anonymous and relate a tad more like real people. The story being told through them though isn't as much so. Stuckmann goes to great lengths through this exposition sequence to accurately depict internet and local news aesthetics of 2008 -he would remember them well. But everything around the presentation of the Paranormal Paranoids is a little stilted, the mystery treated with a grandiosity by the script that doesn't feel credible or earned -the apparent media circus and national movement around Riley's disappearance in particular. It reeks a little of a kind of narrative ambition far exceeding the scope this movie is granted. Some of these ideas needed to be reined in. 
And past the opening sequence it is something that recurs through the movie. The influence of M. Night Shyamalan (whom Stuckmann is an open fan of) is on display in that same assumption of gravitas in concept that the script can't keep up with -though to be clear, it is nowhere as awkward as Shyamalan's worst films in this respect. Nonetheless, the dialogue is clumsily blunt in places and certain story threads -particularly one related to Mia and her husband's inability to have children and the strain that leaves on their relationship, aren't nearly fleshed out enough. There are bits of important character development and tension that appear to be missing.
The mystery meanwhile is modestly engaging, and buoyed by some great uses of location -the woods around the fictitious titular ghost town have that great mix of denseness and sparsity that make for a claustrophobic open setting, and Stuckmann makes great use of the old Ohio State Reformatory -famously the prison that The Shawshank Redemption was shot in. The tone noticeably darkens as the film goes along and Mia discovers more uncomfortable insinuations about what happened -supernatural entities and cult-like practices, as well as her own haunting recollection that confirmed the validity of her sister’s night terrors. Yet when things do reach the climax and the parties responsible for abducting Riley are ascertained, things go way more blatantly off-the-rails as Stuckmann pulls quite obviously from every satanic horror from Rosemary’s Baby to The Witch in articulating a cryptic pagan mythology all his own. And it very much feels like an imitation, in both dialogue and presentation. Subsequently, the final resolution and dark twist, though chilling to a degree, is inorganic and confounding. The more you think about it the less it gels.
The sequence however is effective on its own, and Stuckmann does indeed demonstrate a certain talent for his horror. He is conservative with typical jump scares, though when he does use them he frames them in less obvious ways. Aided by music from Flanagan collaborators the Newton Brothers, he builds a mood of dread rather well too -especially through the prison sequence and in an isolated home in the woods. Likely even before his partnership with Flanagan, Stuckmann seems to have learned from him in how he uses sounds and nebulous imagery to set tension (similar to Flanagan's Haunting of Hill House). I appreciate his use of misdirects too -a woman whose face is spookily enshrouded in shadow for a more mundane reveal a minute later, tipping the audience off to danger ahead without explicitly signaling it. And perhaps it is his background with online video, but in the early goings he knows how to maximize the creepiness of a camcorder.
All this communicates that Stuckmann would be a fine director to shoot a horror film. It is writing one that seems to be his major weakness. Though there is certainly creativity to Shelby Oaks and even its mystery for a while is engaging, its narrative falls apart in a mess of clichés, lore without purpose, and hollow characterization. It is a rough feature debut but not a futile one -what Stuckmann does next, if given the opportunity, will likely be more interesting.

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