As an ambitious first attempt, “Shelby Oaks” might pass as an impressive student project. It displays professional craftsmanship and shines, particularly in its initial 20 minutes, utilizing a mockumentary and found footage approach. However, as the narrative unfolds, the story’s lack of depth and originality turns from somewhat intriguing to disappointingly lackluster. In the competitive realm of major Halloween releases, stacked against some of the top horror films of 2025, it fails to make a lasting impact.

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Viewed as an expensive student film, “Shelby Oaks” might get a passing grade. It’s professionally made and occasionally impressive, particularly in its first 20 minutes where it sticks to a mockumentary/found footage format. As its clichéd and underwritten story progresses, however, it goes from mildly interesting to underwhelming to actively bad in the end. By the standards of a major release in competition for Halloween season screens with some of the best horror movies of 2025, it’s a failure.

The initial hook in “Shelby Oaks” is set up interestingly enough, with a convincing stylistic recreation of true crime documentaries. The subject of this opening “documentary” act is the disappearance of Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn) and her team of ghost-hunters in 2008. Riley’s team, the “Paranormal Paranoids,” became a sensation in the early days of YouTube, so Chris Stuckmann has a bit of a “write what you know” advantage in exploring a mystery through the perspective of internet fame. The story has long been forgotten about by the public, but Riley’s sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) is still desperate to find out what happened. The Paranoids had two cameras with them on their last investigation (only one of which has been found before the movie starts), allowing the mockumentary to mix in some “Blair Witch Project”-style found footage horror.

A jolting bit of violence (perhaps one of those reshoot punch-ups?) effectively segues the film out of mockumentary mode for the late-arriving opening credits. Once the style shifts, however, the filmmaking gets less interesting. It’s baseline competent, not having much to really dislike but not having much to like either — and it’s not nearly scary enough to counteract the general blandness.

When the second camera’s tape is recovered, that means more found footage scenes, but these are integrated awkwardly in lengthy sequences of Mia sitting on her couch watching the tape, turning the film into a glorified reaction video for long stretches. While Mia has a strong motivation in wanting to find her sister and Sullivan’s acting is solid, little else about her character is well developed, and none of the supporting characters have any depth to them either — even if it’s neat they got Keith David to play the prison ward. The mystery she uncovers is drawn from a lot of other horror movies, without much of a unique twist to stand out.

“Shelby Oaks” flat-out jumps the shark in its final act, which does nothing to remedy the movie’s preexisting issues with originality and character development while introducing new annoyances. It’s hard to get into details without spoilers, but the serious problems start with some baffling decisions on Mia’s part. Of course horror movies depend on characters making bad choices, but you need to buy that the characters would make those choices, and Mia doesn’t really have enough character for her exceedingly stupid decisions to make much sense.

More twists borrowed from other horror movies — a little “Barbarian” here, a little “Hereditary” there, some “Rosemary’s Baby” mixed in — pile up on the way toward a mean-spirited conclusion that shifted my opinion firmly into the negative camp on this film. I’m not opposed to meanness in horror — I praised the sheer nastiness of “Bring Her Back” earlier this year — but meanness without a point frustrates me. “Shelby Oaks” doesn’t have anything to say about the ridiculous trauma it subjects its female characters to, perhaps because it’s only doing so as references to other films that had actual perspectives.

Chris Stuckmann has been a voice of positivity on the film critic side of YouTube, a space where the algorithm tends to reward hyperbolic negativity, so it feels bad to give his movie a negative review. I wonder if that’s why so many other reviewers have tried to go soft on this one, giving it bare minimum “fresh” passing grades. Before that awful ending, I might have been among the chorus of 6/10 ratings. Even after seriously disliking that conclusion, I’m hopeful that Stuckmann can grow as a filmmaker. Lots of directors start their careers with a middling feature that plays a few festivals and then goes straight to VOD before improving with future work. Stuckmann’s just unlucky enough to be so famous that his VOD-level debut gets shown in theaters nationwide.

“Shelby Oaks” opens in theaters on October 24.