The official trailer for NEON’s paranormal horror movie Shelby Oaks, the feature directorial debut from Chris Stuckmann, has been released. NEON acquired the popular film critic and YouTuber’s crowd-funded project before its premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia Fest in July 2024. Executive produced by Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, Midnight Mass), NEON provided additional funding — and a polished re-edit thanks to editor Brett W. Bachman (Companion, Mandy, Pig) — for the movie to include “more gore and violence” after they noticed that certain scenes from the script’s original draft were either not included in the initial version of the film or had been toned down due to budgetary issues (via IndieWire).
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Stuckmann was excited to tell his Kickstarter campaign supporters in April how NEON made it possible to “punch up some particularly bloody elements” in Shelby Oaks.
Shelby Oaks Gets Its First Trailer
Blending a narrative and found footage style, Shelby Oaks stars Camille Sullivan (Hunter Hunter), Brendan Sexton III (Don’t Breathe 2), Sarah Durn (Where the Crawdads Sing), Michael Beach (Mayor of Kingstown), Keith David (The Thing), and Derek Mears (2009’s Friday the 13th).
Shelby Oaks follows a woman named Mia (Sullivan) whose sister, Riley (Durn), went missing 12 years ago. Riley was a paranormal investigator and host of the investigative series, “The Paranormal Paranoids,” who disappeared while exploring the abandoned town of Shelby Oaks. Mia has been frantically searching for Riley ever since, convinced that her sister is still alive. As Mia uncovers new and disturbing leads related to Riley’s disappearance, she uncovers evidence of a hidden supernatural evil that she believes dates all the way back to her and Riley’s childhood.
At San Diego Comic-Con this year, Stuckmann revealed to ComicBook that Joel Anderson’s 2008 cult classic horror movie Lake Mungo was the biggest inspiration behind Shelby Oaks.
“I think, more than anything, there’s a film called Lake Mungo. It’s an Australian film directed by Joel Anderson,” Stuckmann said. “It’s presented as a documentary. It’s fictional, but it’s one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen in my life, because the performers are amazing. And even more interesting to me — the filmmaker just kind of stopped making movies after that, and disappeared from the public eye. It kind of also created this whole nuance to it. Like, ‘The guy who made this really scary movie, I can’t even talk to him. I don’t know where he is!’ It’s like, it’s so cool.”
Shelby Oaks will arrive in theaters on October 3rd.
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