The new horror movie “Shelby Oaks” doesn’t begin well.
It ends worse, granted, but it’s off to a rough start. The title card describes the premise of “Grave Encounters” and then one of the first lines of dialogue, from missing YouTube paranormal investigator Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), is a direct lift from “The Blair Witch Project.” If “Shelby Oaks” was a self-aware spin on found footage horror, or a cheeky parody in the “Scary Movie” vein, it could have gotten away with that. Instead, these shoutouts only remind us of other, better movies, to which “Shelby Oaks” cannot compare.
Camille Sullivan stars as Mia, who only has two character traits: her sister is missing, and she wanted to be a mom but she’s not. The first bit of the movie is a found-footage documentary, detailing how Riley’s YouTube series “Paranormal Paranoids” was an online sensation twelve years ago, back when YouTube was new (it had already been popular for seven years) and also there wasn’t much media for people who were interested in the supernatural. Except for “Ghost Hunters,” which had already been on TV for almost a decade and already spawned many imitators. But never mind, I guess that zeitgeist didn’t count.
A sudden tragedy pushes Mia to explore new facets of her sister’s case, like scanning Riley’s most popular videos, released just before she went missing, and finding a mysterious figure in the background. Apparently, in this notorious missing-person’s case, about a famous internet celebrity, nobody paid any attention to this widely available, relevant footage. And, it turns out, they never actually searched around the area where Riley’s last footage was filmed, even a little, because if they had this movie would have been over in minutes. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
After the faux documentary, Mia spends several minutes watching even more videos, then proceeds to investigate some more. Eventually she travels to a ghost town called Shelby Oaks, looks around, by herself, and gets scared a little, before the whole story basically falls into her lap. Frankly, the weirdest thing is that no one goes with her. Mia’s on the outs with her husband, sure, but she also had a whole documentary crew with her when one of the biggest plot points literally knocked at her door. You’d think they’d want to, you know, document this. But apparently true crime documentarians aren’t very invested in true crime. Or documenting things.
Structurally there’s not much to “Shelby Oaks.” Writer/director Chris Stuckmann pulls the rug out early on, switching from faux documentary to a conventional cinematic approach, but he doesn’t have much to say about either format. He’s not commenting on the positive and negative qualities of found footage, mockumentaries, true crime or even standard horror fare. He just pulls a bait-and-switch, then immediately makes one of his protagonists watch yet another video, then gives up and takes us on the same narrative journey you’d find in an actual found-footage movie.
But without a found-footage gimmick, a lot of this journey isn’t justified. The interminable slowness before each scare just feels slow, because we’re not waiting for something to pierce the “found” footage’s veil of reality, we’re waiting for a scene that already looks creepy to get on with it. The protagonist’s uncontrollable urge to ignore red flags walk directly into terrifying situations is hard to justify when she doesn’t need to get any of this on camera. She just needs to run and call the police or an ambulance. Her motivation is to save the day, not to make a damn movie.
So what is “Shelby Oaks” about? By the end of the film, all is finally revealed, and the answer is “not much.” You could say Stuckmann doesn’t adequately explore his themes, but that would imply “Shelby Oaks” has themes. A theme is threaded throughout a narrative. It amplifies the events and the characters, and gives the work of art a sense of purpose. This screenplay seems to confuse a theme with a set-up and a pay-off, since instead of infusing this story with meaning, one particular topic just gets mentioned a couple times. Then at the end the plot gets back around to it, as if that was a twist.
It’s not a twist. It’s not a theme. It’s not subtext. It’s just clunky foreshadowing. It’s a note on an index card that never got expanded on, which leaves the movie feeling hollow and pointless.
I’ll say this for “Shelby Oaks,” and no, it’s not that the film is short. It is short, sure, technically you’re right, but it doesn’t feel short. The characters and plot aren’t hefty enough to fill the running time properly. What it does have is excellent cinematography, courtesy of Andrew Scott Baird (“Blood Relatives”), who establishes each scene as though it’s incredibly portentous, even though it’s usually not. He guides our eye into negative spaces, forcing us to hunt each frame for monsters.
Yes, the movie looks scary. So scary it could almost be confused for a scary movie. Almost. But only if you’re not paying attention, and miss how shallow, derivative and underwritten it is. It’s that rare horror film that’s scarier if you have it on in the background while you’re doing a sudoku puzzle than if you’re actually, you know, watching it.
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