A witchy crone, a possible incubus and an abandoned amusement park add up to not very much in “Shelby Oaks,” a derivative and dogged horror movie that reverts to rote with wearying regularity.
Set in the appropriately named Darke County, Ohio, the story sends Mia (a fine Camille Sullivan) on a redoubled search for her sister, Riley (Sarah Durn), who disappeared 12 years earlier. Back then, Riley was the host of a “Ghost Hunters”-style YouTube show whose paranormal investigations were cut short when she and her small crew vanished, along with one of their two cameras. Reclaimed recordings from both devices guide the narrative, showing Riley’s team at a seemingly haunted amusement park and, later, being terrified by who knows what at a spooky hotel in the long-abandoned town of the film’s title. All we can glean from the usual found-footage hubbub is that their adversary may very well be an asthmatic werewolf.
The first feature by the YouTube personality Chris Stuckmann, who financed the film mainly through Kickstarter, “Shelby Oaks” feels made with love and not much originality. Clogged with clichés — the milky-eyed hag with a demonic secret (Robin Bartlett), the dank dungeon, a child’s disturbing drawings — the movie is intermittently gruesome and sometimes baffling. Keith David as a prison warden and Michael Beach as a detective provide all-too-brief stabs of clarity, but the plot remains head-scratchingly opaque.
This places an extra burden on the cinematographer, Andrew Scott Baird, to secure our attention, and he gives the many nighttime scenes a classy, coppery glow. His task might have been less onerous had his director remembered that often the most effective scares are those that happen in the light of day.
Shelby Oaks
Rated R for bloody suicide and an attempted infanticide. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.
The post ‘Shelby Oaks’ Review: A Lost Woman and Found Footage appeared first on New York Times.
