Shelby Oakes Review – Addictive Halloween Horror Causes No Scare | Horror movies

IThis may have been the year that saw sinners raise hell during Easter and target weapons in late summer, but this Halloween, the options are scarily poor by comparison, no tricks or treats, just junk. Last week’s Elm Street-cribbing Black Phone 2 was a sign that the franchise was already running out of steam, as Shelby Oakes, disappointing with a low budget this week, tries and fails to start a new film, a moody attempt to evoke the damp dread of The Blair Witch Project, a film that has so far proven impossible to replicate (Horror fans would do well to make the most of the Sinners Imax re-release.)

It’s the debut of YouTube film critic Chris Stockman, who premiered his Kickstarter-funded film at the genre-driven Fantasia festival last year, attracting the attention of Neon, a company that had just scored a surprise hit with the serial killer horror film Longlegs. In an unusual move, they gave Stuckmann an extra budget to improve it, reportedly adding more gore, before packaging it, with another branding marketing campaign, as the must-see movie on Halloween this year. But no amount of late-stage tinkering can hide what still feels embarrassingly incomplete, a cheaply cobbled-together head-scratcher that doesn’t seem ready for a wide theatrical release. This weekend, expect a refund…

Given Stuckmann’s background, it’s no surprise that he feels most comfortable depicting the online world, and in the opening segment the film works a little better, as a mockumentary setting up the sorry tale of the Paranormal Paranoids, a group of online sleuths led by Reilly (Sarah Dorn). She disappeared years ago, and her older sister Mia (Camille Sullivan, absolutely exhausted) has been obsessed with finding her ever since. It’s a derivative premise, set in the late 2000s and resembling much found footage of the era, but it’s a style Stuckmann probably should have stayed in, with the more cinematic, stylistic, realistic narrative that follows proving far more complex.

Mia’s search for her sister never sweeps us away, and is a remarkably flat and uncomplicated journey, led by clues left on a tape that might as well say The Ring on it but has the words Shelby Oaks instead, suggesting a ghost town once populated by an amusement park. It’s hard to care about what you’ll find and where, and even though the movie ends before reaching the 80-minute mark, the search feels endlessly tedious (the only bright spot is a fun, quirky opportunity from actor Robin Bartlett). Stuckmann aggressively throws everything at the wall from the genre’s broader tropes to the films he enjoys, a predictable strategy from someone on record as an enthusiast of the genre. But it never comes together or manages to feel like its own thing, the hackneyed work of someone who hasn’t found his own voice yet and hopes that imitating others will be enough.

It’s a stark contrast to the recent work of another YouTube creator, Cary Parker, whose first feature film, “Obsession,” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September. It was a horror film made on a smaller budget of just $1 million, but it was the clear reach of someone who actually belonged outside the confines of a smartphone, made with swagger and real flair, and a seamless transfer of skill sets from one world to the next (there’s a reason Focus picked up the film for $15 million). Shelby Oaks is embarrassingly unfinished and out of place by comparison, an unfinished half-attempt that was never supposed to find its way onto a screen you can’t hold in your hand. As Stuckmann heads toward the end, it’s clear that he’s not just sticking the landing, he’s heading toward a breakdown, a finale of hasty, senseless dissonance that will probably lead to the wrong kind of booing this Halloween.

Even in this extreme kind of increasingly diminishing returns, Shelby Oaks is as disposable as it gets.