By Nick Nitkowski 

I’ve been following the YouTube channel of Chris Stuckmann’s for a very long time. For those not in the know, he is a film critic on YouTube. I always thought he had good opinions on movies. Some I agreed with and some that I didn’t, but the entertainment value in movies is always subjective for everyone. You’d be surprised how many people may hate certain movies that are widely praised by both critics and audiences, but everyone has different opinions on movies and as long as they are strictly sensible on those opinions and not hating just to hate, then I don’t hold opposite opinions on films against anyone. But needless to say, when I heard that Chris Stuckmann was directing his first movie, I was immediately exciting to see what that movie was going to be and it turned out to be “Shelby Oaks”, a horror film that I actually put a little bit of money towards to help fund it via Kickstarter. Can’t wait to get my perks in the mail. Now that I’ve finally been able to watch it on the big screen, how was Chris Stuckmann’s first movie?

“Shelby Oaks” is a movie about a woman who is searching for her long-lost sister who went missing while exploring haunted locations for her YouTube channel. As I had mentioned before, the movie was funded through Kickstarter by fans of Chris Stuckmann’s YouTube channel, myself being one of them. It premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival back in July of 2024 and was picked up by Neon, who is now distributing the film to theaters just in time for Halloween. Needless to say, this is one amazing success story for a YouTube film critic turned independent filmmaker. 

So, what did I think of the film itself? It was… okay. I did not hate it, but I also didn’t quite love it as much as I wanted to. I avoided any and all promotional trailers beforehand just so I could see everything with fresh eyes. Not high expectations, but high hopes. Let me start off by saying that you can easily see the passion in each frame of the film. Chris Stuckmann clearly gave his all into this project, and it shows on screen. I saw it myself. The thing is that horror is a very tricky genre to tackle.

When it comes to horror films, there has to be a very strict balance of things. You don’t want the film to be too quiet to build suspense because then the audience will get bored. This could be attributed to pacing issues as well. You also don’t want to overload your film with jump scares either because then the audience will get annoyed. The balance of these two things was about 60/40 favoring silent suspense. There were a few jump scares in the movie. One of which was very effectively used. I did not see it coming , and it got me good. But the main thing that a horror movie absolutely must have above all else is a solid and engaging story.

The story is pretty simple. It’s a missing person story with horror elements. And with only a 91-minute runtime, it did feel like the pace of the story was stretched out a lot just to meet the feature length quota which caused the movie to feel a bit slow at the start. For example, the movie opened with a documentary-style opening that started off interesting, but went on longer than it probably should have to the point that I thought the whole movie was going to be in this style until it changed and became an actual movie. I understand that with indie filmmaking, you have to make things work within your budget. But at the same time, I’ve seen a lot more done with a lot less. Not to diminish what was put on screen, I just feel as if some of the silent parts were trimmed down and a little more story exploration was added to the end, this movie would have been solid at the same run time. But hindsight is 20/20.

Overall, this was an ambitious project with a great success story behind it. The only real problem I had with it was pacing in the first half of the movie , and then the last half felt like it went by a little too fast. That’s that 60/40 split that I had mentioned. But what you see on screen is visually interesting. You can see the passion that went into the project by Chris Stuckmann. It’s a decent first feature film for him and my critiques are not meant to tarnish or diminish what was done in the project, but more so to help guide and educate to perhaps enhance his next project should he choose to make one. All of my criticisms are meant to be constructive. I believe it helps improve the next project. I cringe at the thought of where my projects would be without constructive criticism. I did appreciate this film for what it was, but I also saw things that could be improved. And if Chris Stuckmann does make another film, I will definitely be looking forward to seeing it with great anticipation. 

3 stars