Perhaps it’s a result of his love of horror, but Chris Stuckmann has been fearless in the making of his film, “Shelby Oaks.” Just days away from its world premiere at the Fantasia Festival, he happily admits that the interest in the group’s reactions has “been on my mind for probably five years.” Fortunately, he’s crafted a bold film that can stand alongside many of his favorites.
A lifelong filmmaker — he directed his first feature at age 15, and it was “a magical baseball diamond inspired by ‘Discipline of Goals’” — Stuckmann rose to fame as one of YouTube’s first celebrities, a devout and honest film critic who has amassed more than two million followers since launching his channel 13 years ago. Starting his critical career by sitting on his mattress in front of two posters for “Darkish Knight,” Stuckmann has kept his sharp critique accessible to everyday viewers — even as his set design and digital camera have become more skilled.
Soon, his life as a YouTuber allowed him to give up his day job as a school bus driver. However, he was always writing personal ventures and developing short films on the side. The real inspiration came while he was filming his annual Halloween special in 2016, where he rented a cabin in the Tennessee woods with his wife, Samantha Elizabeth, to talk about — appropriately enough — “cabin in the woods” movies.
“We did this whole immersive sketch about a masked, knife-wielding maniac in the woods who’s trying to kill us,” he says. “It was told from the angle of usually the killer, and usually us, and we did it ourselves. We didn’t have a crew. It’s one of my fondest memories with my wife. On the way back from Tennessee, we drove six hours back to Ohio, and we were talking, and we realized it was simple and fun, and we were both so bored of waiting at that point to do something. We tried for a long time to do something from scratch, and it just wasn’t happening. And we decided, ‘Let’s just try to self-fund something told from the angle of missing YouTubers.’”
That concept grew into “Shelby Oaks.” After developing the idea further, Stuckmann had a meeting with Paper Road Photos during Improbable Fest 2019, and the venture began to roll. He gained even more motivation when a March 2022 Kickstarter campaign he launched to add more days to the shoot, as well as pay for necessities like keeping the crew compensated and getting the right equipment, soared past its $250,000 goal in two days, eventually ending with $1,390,845 from 14,720 backers.
Courtesy of Fantasia Pageant
While Stuckmann is keeping the plot details of “Shelby Oaks” under wraps to keep its twists fresh, the film follows a woman trying to find her sister, a YouTube paranormal investigator who has been missing for 12 years. Given the subject matter, fans don’t know much about what kind of movie would emerge: Will it be entirely handheld? Shot like a YouTube video? Will it be filled with slang and in-jokes about online culture? While Stuckmann and his cinematographer Andrew Scott Baird play around a bit with style and construction to advance some elements of the story, “Shelby Oaks” is a decidedly cinematic affair. Shots are deliberately blocked out to ease the tension of the scary and dramatic scenes in ways that are far beyond most online content.
“[Baird]was one of the main reasons I realized we should probably do a Kickstarter,” Stuckmann says. “Early on, as we were talking, we realized we weren’t going to have the funding to do what we wanted to do. It was through his encouragement that I was like, ‘Okay, we should probably do this,’ because the footage we were building and the storyboards we were doing were just more ambitious than we initially thought. It was through really long discussions over weeks with Andrew, just looking at other examples of what could be executed in the indie horror house and really just looking at how much certain things would cost.”
Once taking photos started working, Stuckmann says the crew was so invested in the task that, despite his internet fame, he never worried about being labeled as anything other than a filmmaker on set.
“On day one, I was very aware of the fact that I’m kind of new to this, so to speak,” he says. “At least that’s the idea: This is my first time shooting something behind a digital camera, even though I’ve been making films since I was a kid. That’s fine, and I understood that. I had to reassure people from day one. We had this whole speech that we did about making sure people felt safe and reporting anything that made them really uncomfortable, but you can also come to me with any issues that you might have. Or something that you have as a concept that you might see, or something that you might think might be useful for a scene. A lot of the time, we used a lot of these concepts that people came up with, because I felt like film is a collaborative experience.”
“Shelby Oaks” has received two major stamps of approval in the horror community in recent weeks: the announcement that “The Haunting of Hill House” creator Mike Flanagan has signed on as an executive producer, and that distributor Neon has acquired the film — days after the successful debut of Oz Perkins’ “Longlegs.”
Flanagan and Stuckmann have known each other since the filmmaker contacted Stuckmann to inquire about the reviews of his 2013 film, “Oculus.” From there, the pair began a correspondence, and Flanagan offered to read one of Stuckmann’s scripts.
“He gave me notes and suggestions, and was extraordinarily helpful,” Stuckmann says. “That kind of
modified the connection to talk about nerdy stuff, but we were also taking notes and making suggestions about scripts and things like that.”
When Stuckmann ran the Kickstarter marketing campaign for “Shelby Oaks,” Flanagan reached out to see if he could read the script and became involved with the project.
“I came back here and asked him for notes on the first rough cut of this,” he says. “From that moment on, he said, ‘How can I help?’ From that point on, it’s been a major blessing.”
In an email to SelectionFlanagan says he was “impressed with Chris’s work ethic, his mind, his experience and his willpower.”
“I watched his Kickstarter marketing campaign for ‘Shelby’ with great curiosity because it really took off,” he continues. “I funded my own little film ‘Absentia’ through Kickstarter again in 2010, and it brought that roar back to me. His drive and do-it-yourself outlook rang a bell in my memory of what it was like when I was first starting out. I watched his fundraising videos and thought back to the Kickstarter marketing campaign, and what it was like trying to make your own choices in a business that could be very difficult to break into. He was out there pounding the pavement and doing it, throwing everything he had into this dream, with the combined efforts of his family and friends, and that just blew my mind.”
As for the Neon deal, Stuckmann says he seems to have a kindred spirit in the group.
“They love movies,” he says. “In our one-on-one meeting, it was just a bunch of references to movies we love. They love movies so much that they usually care about the filmmaker, too. They want to make it possible for everyone involved to be excited about making movies. It’s kind of weird to say, but it’s just a warm, safe place.”
As for the long term, Stuckmann is focused on making films and slowing down YouTube’s reviews, but he’s always excited to champion good films alongside his platform. However, he also hopes to use YouTube as an example of the precise process of making a film, so that more audiences can understand the work that goes into making a feature.
“If it were an ideal world, I could continue making films and talk frequently about films that I really like, but also
“I want to share behind-the-scenes stuff with people on my channel about whatever I’m doing,” Stuckmann says. “To let them get into the process of making a film in a way that maybe hasn’t been done as much. My ultimate goal is to be able to lift the veil a little bit and show people how a lot of these things are done, because a lot of people who talk about how films are made online tend to sugarcoat or gloss over some things.”
Flanagan said he was happy to be able to help his friend on his journey to make “Shelby Oaks.”
“There was a lot about Chris’s experience and story that reminded me of what I went through early in my career,” he says. “He’s on a very exciting path, and it was a pleasure to share just a few small steps with him on his journey.”
Courtesy of Chris Stuckmann