There’s a nice touch at the beginning of “Shelby Oaks” when Mia (Camille Sullivan) can’t be bothered to wipe the blood off her face after a stranger shows up at her door to blow his brains out, with his last moment on earth used to hand her a tape with the same title scrawled across it as Chris Stuckmann’s thoughtful debut feature. She has to wait a bit as police come to the premises to file a report and her husband Robert (Brendan Sexton III) wants to reflect on what happened before he goes to bed. But with her adrenaline running high, she can think of nothing else but to watch the tape, putting it back into the camcorder owned by her sister Riley (Sara Durn) to watch whatever may be on it, eager to see if there are clues to Riley’s whereabouts after disappearing years earlier, but more importantly giving her some moments with her sister that she’s never had before.
The visual is striking as the glow of the TV reflects back upon her bloodstrewn face, but the sense that her own blood is boiling is more potent when “Shelby Oaks” finds the prospect of false hope to be as terrifying as anything else. There are plenty of creepy things popping up along the way as Mia embarks on a seemingly futile search for Riley, but Stuckmann and co-writer Sam Liz are wise to consider her single-mindedness as a double-edge sword, all but putting her own life on pause when her sister’s popular web series “Paranormal Paranoids” abruptly ended with three of the hosts dying horrifically shortly after investigating ghosts at a prison. That episode aired, but the tape Mia received is one that didn’t, set inside a long-abandoned amusement park property called Shelby Oaks and somehow seeing a man commit suicide at her doorstep becomes the only the second most disturbing thing she’s seen by the end of the day.
Although the less known the better going into “Shelby Oaks,” it can be safely assumed that many going in will have a good idea about its backstory when Stuckmann, a popular film critic on YouTube raised much of the film’s budget from a massively successful crowdsourcing campaign. The film’s provenance is notable when while one would never question the big screen bonafides of the picture, the story itself has a certain online mentality as it follows Mia down a rabbit hole that has been enabled by web searches — though to be fair, she makes it over to a library to look up microfiche — and constantly switches things up to keep your attention. (Even though its unrelated to the internet, the idea that Mia sits down for a true crime documentary to keep the story alive seems very attuned to this particular moment in time and the amount of credible mixed media put together for the production is one of its most impressive elements.) Stuckmann’s cultural consciousness in this regard is surely an asset as are certain tenets of the subgenres the film touches on in its shapeshifting, with the director keenly aware that if you have an exposition dump in a horror film, it’s good to have it delivered by Keith David, there’s much goodwill earned by a clever title card drop and that an audience won’t mind the volume being raised to ridiculous levels on a skittish score when a clue can send Mia racing down the road to chase it down.
Given the initial found footage conceit, there are at least a couple moments that strain credibility if one should wonder who on earth was there to capture them as well as a third act that may play out as a little too far removed from where the story began, but then again that’s where the film’s investment in Mia’s blind determination pays off as you’re more likely to set aside more outlandish elements as she does. With an endearing turn from Sullivan, “Shelby Oaks” works best when it sees Mia’s obsession with finding Riley as the most immediate threat to her, alienating her husband who has long wished to move on a start a family of their own and even clarity to the case at hand may be difficult to come by, considering what she still holds onto. There’s a larger mythology that the film engages with to mixed results surrounding what Riley herself may have found in those “Paranormal Paranoid” episodes and beyond the nagging possibility that Stuckmann may be saving something for a sequel, the end seems slightly incongruous to the means of getting there when to keep it a surprise only so much groundwork can be laid. Still, there’s reason to look forward to a follow-up from the director whether it’s set in this world or not, certainly reviving the ride at “Shelby Oaks,” whether or not anything else there can spring back to life.
“Shelby Oaks” was picked up for distribution by NEON.