‘Shelby Oaks’ Review: A Woman Is Haunted by Her Sister’s Disappearance in Chris Stuckmann’s Too-Familiar Chiller

After becoming the biggest Kickstarter funding draw ever for a horror features, “Shelby Oaks” certainly evinces popular YouTuber Chris Stuckmann’s love of the genre. But while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it isn’t necessarily the most rewarding for others to watch. This mix of found-footage, missing-person, demonic-possession and other stock narrative hooks too often feels like a compendium of ideas from other movies Frankenstein’d together, with too little effort put towards finding a personality of its own.

In theaters from Neon on Oct. 24, over a year after premiering at 2024’s Fantasia Film Festival, the film should scare up decent interest from fans eager for Halloween season thrills. But it’s not a terribly promising, let alone memorable, start to what one assumes is intended as a franchise. Instead it feels more like the kind of watchable but mediocre entry you typically get when a…