With Shelby Oaks, writer/director Chris Stuckmann made the leap from YouTube to theatrical film. But his feature directorial debut, which is now playing in theaters, doesn’t look the same as it did when it played the festival circuit in 2024.
Shelby Oaks follows Mia (Camille Sullivan), a woman who has been obsessively searching for her younger sister Riley (Sarah Durn) for more than a decade. The missing woman was the host of a popular YouTube channel called “Paranormal Paranoids” and disappeared along with her three co-hosts while filming in the titular derelict town.
While the murdered bodies of the other three hosts were eventually discovered, Mia lacks closure because Riley’s disappearance remains unsolved. As her search is captured via a documentary crew, Mia’s marriage to Robert (Brendan Sexton III) begins to buckle under the burden of her obsession. Things only get worse when a new lead thrusts Mia back into investigative mode with renewed – and dangerous – vigour.
Shelby Oaks played at a variety of festivals last year, including Fantasia Film Festival (where I reviewed it for Bloody Disgusting). Since then, however, the Kickstarter-funded film was acquired for distribution by Neon, picked up a producing credit from Mike Flanagan, and received $1M from Neon for reshoots to help realize Stuckmann’s vision.
Having watched the new cut, here’s what is different in the version now available to audiences. Warning: Some spoilers to follow.
Face Peel
The film opens with text explaining the circumstances of Riley’s disappearance and the context for how the footage was recovered. We see the young blonde cowering in a cabin bedroom before venturing off-camera into the hall.
Later, this sequence is repeated, but Mia has discovered another tape (courtesy of Charlie Talbert’s Wilson Miles), which includes additional footage that features more graphic shots of Riley’s dead co-hosts. In the original cut of the film, these murders were only briefly glimpsed, and the amount of blood and gore was limited.
In the new cut, there’s a whole new sequence featuring the film’s supernatural protagonist Tarion (played by Derek Mears, as well as David Greathouse and Jon Michael Simpson) ripping the face off one of the men. The camera lingers on the gory practical effect, which is so forceful that the body is lifted off the floor before falling back to the ground…minus a face.
In a post-screening Q&A, Stuckmann explained that reshoots for this sequence alone took a half day to complete (from set-up to clean-up to resetting for additional takes). That was a luxury (both time and money) that the production simply didn’t have the first time around.
Hellhound Action
Part of the film’s mythology includes hellhounds that protect Tarion and its progeny. While there were dogs in the festival cut of the film, Stuckmann elaborated that the additional funds allowed them to bring the dogs back for more action. Fun fact: the hounds are real, not CGI; they come from Sweden; and they were trained to perform very specific actions in the film.
Mia first spots a dog eying her when she’s out on the porch late at night, watching old videos of her sister. Later, she’s confronted by a dog at the prison outside Wilson Miles’ jail cell. It’s possible that this brief scene has been touched up because the effect of the monster’s hand resting on the dog looks better. Sullivan’s hair is also styled differently in select shots from this sequence, which matches her hair from the reshot climax (see below).
The biggest new addition, however, is the film’s final sequence. After Riley has been rescued from Norma (Robin Bartlett) ‘s cottage, Mia and Riley fight over Riley’s demon seed baby. In the climax, Riley plummets through the cracked bedroom window and, as Mia watches and screams from above, her sister’s still alive body is attacked by *multiple* hellhounds who rip her to shreds.
My memory is slightly hazy about how much of this carnage was visible in the original cut, but in this new version, Stuckmann treats us to close-up shots of the dogs ripping at Riley’s face and body. Much like the face rip from earlier in the film, this gore is much more explicit, and the camera lingers on the glorious practical FX.
Sequel Potential?
It appears that these reshoots have helped the modestly budgeted film, which has garnered mostly positive reviews from critics (67% on Rotten Tomatoes). Intriguingly, if audiences embrace the film, Stuckmann has some ideas on how to expand Shelby Oaks. In the post-screening Q&A, he confessed that he has not one, but TWO more ideas set in this world.
The first is a sequel in the vein of the original Halloween 2 that would immediately follow the events of the first film as Mia is forced to explain the brutal death of her sister.
The second pitch is a prequel that would explore Norma’s story, including how she came to worship Tarion, gave birth to Wilson Miles, and became a rapist recluse in the woods.
Shelby Oaks is now playing in theaters.