Shelby Oaks: it’s guaranteed to infuriate, but this found footage horror is genuinely frightening

A first feature from critic Chris Stuckmann, Shelby Oaks lurches from one overfamiliar horror set-up to another. It starts as a found footage film: a documentary crew interviews Mia (Camille Sullivan), sister of long-missing Riley Brennan (Sarah Dorn), one of a quartet of podcasters known as the Paranormal Paranoids who disappeared in the abandoned, probably haunted town of Shelby Oaks twelve years ago. Mia talks about her sister’s persistent night terrors (involving a man at her window) while the well-assembled Blair Witchy business makes this about the thirtieth paranormal-podcasters-get-got picture down the pike.  

Then the format changes (along with screen size), something major happens on Mia’s doorstep, and credits cut in. The film continues in regular narrative form, occasionally reverting to faux documentary jitters. Mystery threads are pursued, leading to two terrific locations – an abandoned prison and an abandoned amusement park – which hold clues to the haunting and the disappearance. Mia is so obsessed with her presumed-dead sister that her husband (Brendan Sexton III) is fed up with the drama, which has put their plans to have a family on hold. It’s easy to sympathise with him. Mia continually rushes alone into scary places on thin pretexts like the dimmest had-I-but-known heroine in horror films of yore.  

Possible solutions are hinted at but the last act defaults to a horror film trope (forced pregnancy) which was in vogue circa 2010 but is back in the news again and filtering into contemporary shockers like Immaculate and The First Omen (both 2024). Despite its wayward nature and ‘oh come on now’ moments, Shelby Oaks has big pluses – Sullivan is excellent in the lead (Durn, in a smaller role, gets a lot of mileage out of being haunted) and Robin Bartlett contributes a terrifically creepy late-film turn as an ambiguous old woman who seems to be sole resident of the abandoned town.  

Some comedies (eg, Eurotrip 2004) are proudly stupid and tasteless, only competently filmed but manage to be consistently funny – so they have to be rated a success. Shelby Oaks is the horror film equivalent.  It’s massively derivative, trips over its own story, includes at least one element guaranteed to infuriate, and is queasily fixated on attitudes to women which only a few years ago have seemed outmoded but are horribly back on the American agenda. Despite all its flaws, its use of an overgrown fairground attraction and decaying prison cells evoke creeping dread while its sudden reversals and shock/surprise moments are genuinely frightening. So that’s two decaying thumbs up.

► Shelby Oaks is in UK cinemas now.