Quick note: this article contains brief discussion of sexual assault.
On paper, Shelby Oaks is everything I could ask for in a horror movie.
Well, at least, that’s what I thought when I first saw the hype around Chris Stuckmann’s debut feature doing the rounds. I mean, come on: found footage! An internet marketing campaign! A mixture of family horror and procedural mystery! I would eat this with a spoon straight from the package and savour every mouthful. Which is why, to be honest, I was so disappointed at the bland, boring, and frankly exploitative trudge we got instead.
Shelby Oaks follows Mia (Camille Sullivan) as she attempts to make sense of the disappearance of her younger sister Riley (Sarah Durn), the star of a YouTube ghost-hunting show who has been missing since her and her crew visited the ghost town of Shelby Oaks.
The film dots between regular narrative cinema, found footage, and mockumentary, with no aspect commanding a particularly outstanding execution. Bringing together so many narrative layers is tricky, but Stuckmann struggles to move between them comfortably – aside from a great bait-and-switch before the opening credits, it always feels to me like the various different approaches jumble up on top of each other rather than complimenting the storytelling and unravelling mystery. There’s a few moments of style and invention here, but they’re few and far between, bogged down by images, scares, and sequences that we’ve already seen done and done better in this genre.
Not that the story does much to buck that trend, either. I’m not saying that you have to come out of the gate swinging on your first try and create some sort of cinematic House of Leaves that rewrites the entire cinematic horror genre or anything, but Shelby Oaks feels like a pretty staid and dull take on the done-to-death demonic horror genre with a sprinkle of family trauma thrown in for good measure. Dialogue clunks, performances waver between panto and prestige, and the atmosphere never really gets beyond “as unsettling as knowing my cat is waiting for me in the dark when I try to go to the loo in the middle of the night”.
Mia’s pursuit of the truth is decidedly convenient (and, given the apparently legendary status of this crime across the internet, pretty unbelievable – the gruelling minutiae that are dug up through the endless obsession over popular cases like this one would certainly have already overturned a few stones that we’re to believe Mia’s the first to get to), and the film’s reliance on recurrent narration to really make sure that we’ve made sense of the story is downright insulting given how simple this plot is at its core.
And then, of course, there’s the matter of the third act, which reveals that Riley was kidnapped to be sexually assaulted and forcibly impregnated repeatedly over the course of the twelve years she’s been missing. Look, I truly think horror can be one of the most impactful genres to explore some of the darkest aspects of humanity (and sexual abuse in particular – see also She Will), but it’s such a handwave of a plot point here as to feel kind of exploitative. I have no issue with movies taking on these thorny, difficult topics, but doing virtually nothing to explore the impact such abuse had on Riley before they throw her to the literal wolves makes it feel more like another cheap exploitation of female trauma than an earnest attempt to explore the same. Throw on top of that a decidedly thin motherhood plot for Mia that’s mostly handled in clumsy symbolism and beatific beaming at babies, and it’s amateur hour all round when it comes to the characterization of our leading women.
I really wanted to love Shelby Oaks. But the movie we got is, for me, a dull, dreary, and all-round dry tread over ground that’s already been explored more meaningfully and impactfully by other filmmakers and creatives in general.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via GeekTyrant)
No But Listen 