The Hype Before the Haunting
Shelby Oaks started as a Kickstarter phenomenon in 2021, pulling in over $1 million, a staggering number for an indie horror debut.
Stuckmann promised an eerie blend of mystery and emotion, centered on a woman investigating her sister's disappearance tied to a group of ghost hunters called The Paranormal Paranoids.
The pitch was irresistible: part Blair Witch, part Lake Mungo, all filtered through a YouTuber who'd spent a decade calling out lazy horror tropes.
The internet believed in him. Horror forums treated the project like sacred canon. Even other critics, his old peers, cheered him on.
It was the cinematic equivalent of "let him cook."
So, How Did It Turn Out?
Now that Shelby Oaks has finally arrived, the results are complicated.
Critics gave it a 58% on Rotten Tomatoes - not bad, not great, just fine.
IMDb sits around 6.7. Variety called it "an atmospheric but uneven experiment."
It opened with $2.4 million at the box office. That's a solid debut for an indie film, landing 7th place that weekend.
Some praised its ambition. Others called it "a checklist of horror clichés" - the very thing Stuckmann spent years warning against.
Some critics said it "pivots from found footage to traditional filmmaking, and the air comes out."
Basically: half the internet's clapping. The other half's writing essays titled 'What Went Wrong with Shelby Oaks.'
The Irony of the Comment Section
There's something poetic and a little cruel about watching a YouTube critic become the subject of the same system he helped build.
For years, Stuckmann broke down other people's creative choices. Now, thousands of people with thumbnails and reaction faces are doing it to him.
The critic became the content.
It's kind of karmic, but not in a mean way, more like a cultural feedback loop.
And to his credit, Stuckmann's taking it in stride. He understands now what it feels like to have your intentions analyzed by strangers.
That might be the real horror story here.
The Movie Isn't Bad - It's Just Overstudied
I'll say this: Shelby Oaks is not a disaster. It's competent, moody, sometimes even beautiful. You can tell it was made by someone who loves the genre deeply.
But it also feels like the work of someone who's watched too many horror movies to surprise himself anymore.
Every scene feels like it's trying not to make a mistake.
It's careful when it should be chaotic. Polished when it should be raw.
The tension is there, but the pulse is missing.
It's the cinematic version of an over-edited essay: smart, detailed, but terrified of getting a red mark.
From Reviewer to Storyteller
That's the real leap, and where a lot of YouTubers struggle when they move from commentary to creation.
Being a critic means knowing how stories work, but being a filmmaker means learning how to make them breathe.
And those are two completely different muscles.
For years, audiences have wanted creators to "make their own thing." But Shelby Oaks shows that translating taste into storytelling isn't easy. The instincts that make you a great reviewer can actually hold you back when you're the one holding the camera.
From Critic to Creator (and Back Again)
I didn't love Shelby Oaks. But I respect it.
It's a little self-serious, a little overengineered, but it's also sincere in a way most horror films aren't anymore. You can feel Stuckmann trying, really trying to say something about grief and fear and online obsession.
That counts for something.
And maybe that's the lesson: it's easy to critique from the couch. It's much harder to risk being critiqued. Chris Stuckmann made that leap, and now he knows what it's like on the other side of the comment section.
And honestly? I'll still watch whatever he makes next, just like I used to watch his reviews.