By MICHAEL GINGOLD
When SHELBY OAKS opened in theaters last month, it was in a different form than it first played festivals in 2024 (including a world premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia, where we reviewed it). Once Neon picked it up for distribution, they allowed filmmaker Chris Stuckmann to go in and fine-tune the movie, which hit digital platforms today and sees extras-packed Blu-ray and DVD release January 6. Stuckmann discusses that process with RUE MORGUE below.
Stuckmann, who had previously won a wide following for his YouTube film reviews, made his writing/directing debut on SHELBY OAKS, on which Mike Flanagan was an executive producer. Camille Sullivan stars as Mia, a woman whose investigation into the disappearance of her paranormal-podcaster sister leads her to strange and frightening places. The early portions of the festival cut were framed as a kind of mock-documentary, and SHELBY OAKS is now a more streamlined narrative scare machine.
At what point did Neon become involved with SHELBY OAKS?
We were right about to do Fantasia, and they bought the movie. And we decided it was good and fair to continue with our promised festivals. Fantasia had been so wonderful, and a lot of times when a studio buys a movie, they immediately take it out of festivals and kind of put it in a box. But Fantasia had been so great, and we just wanted to make sure that we had our premiere at that point.
Did festival audience reactions to the film inspire you to make any changes, or add or subtract anything from it?
Not really, no. What went down was, Neon read our original draft of the script, and they were like, “There are three or four things in here that aren’t in the movie, and we’re just wondering why.” And I said, “Well, we ran out of money.” These were some expensive elements relating to animals and gore and stuff that just absolutely destroy any day on an indie movie. You can take up the whole day with these types of things. And they loved those ideas so much that they gave me three extra days to go in and shoot things that were in my original script that I had kind of long before abandoned hope of ever achieving on film. It was a genuine privilege to be able to do those things and put them into the movie.
Can you talk in a little more detail about what you added?
Well, without getting into spoilers, there are specific heightened moments that involve violence toward individuals in the film that I’m pretty excited about being in the movie.
How many of the original locations did you go back to, and was there any difficulty in revisiting them?
Just the prison. We had a whole day on greenscreen, and then we had a whole day on greenscreen with dogs, and then maybe a half day at the prison, and we were very, very excited. That’s my favorite location in the movie. There were just a handful of things in there where I thought, “If we can just include these five or six extra things that I wish we could have done on the original shoot, that we didn’t have the time to do…” We had two nights at that prison on the original shoot, which was simply not enough time. But, you know, that’s what happens when you’re making a movie without a lot of money.
Just looking at the original version, you got a lot out of those two days at the prison…
Yeah, we hustled. Our crew are heroes, man. We really went for it.
Did you get all your original crew back to do the reshoots?
Quite a few of them, yeah. There were a handful of new people just due to time and scheduling, but pretty much everybody came back.
Who did your makeup effects for the reshoots, and were they the same people who had done them on the first shoot?
Yeah, we did have the same hair and makeup team. But we also had some new folks for some of the more creature-y stuff. We had a new person named Jason Hamer, who is a legend. He just finished work on Christopher Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY. He really provided a nice little boost to those days.
You also streamlined the film; the new cut is about 10 minutes shorter than the previous one. What was that process like?
Well, if I’m being completely transparent with you, when you lock a movie, it’s a process–a very long process that involves multiple departments. It’s sound, it’s editing, it’s VFX, it’s score. It’s a bunch of people saying, “Pencils down, we’re finished.” And to say, “I would like to open up the edit and unlock it again” is very difficult on all of those departments. And when we got the chance to add those things that I always wanted to be in the movie, that meant we had to unlock it anyway. And then my brain started firing on all cylinders. And I thought, “OK, if we have a little more time, let’s jump back in,” so that’s what we did.
Can you talk about the specific material you took out, and why you decided to remove it?
Honestly, it’s just the documentary portion of the movie that was shaved a little bit. Not by much. There’s sort of a transition of going from one place to another that we decided was more propulsive if we streamlined that section. Instead of going back to one location, she goes straight toward another. We just felt that it was stronger that way.
Were you trying to orient it more toward a narrative feature and a little less of a mock-doc?
It just became about where we wanted the audience to be in regards to feeling unsettled, feeling creeped out, feeling scared. We had some moments in the doc that I do miss, but were a little funny, where we aimed for levity. But as we watched the movie more and more, we decided the film was scarier if we removed some of those moments. And that’s what we did.
Were you able to tweak any of the sound or other technical values now that you had another chance to work on it?
It wasn’t so much that we had another chance to work on it. It was that we got an influx of money that we didn’t have before. And so we were able to mix the movie on the Fox lot with some of the best sound mixers in the business. You’d be crazy to not take that opportunity, especially with a horror movie. A similar thing happened with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, actually. The original cut of that movie was screened at festivals, and when DreamWorks bought it, one of the biggest chunks of money they put into it was for a new sound mix. Because it just enhances the experience. So I was mixing on the Fox lot right next to the room where Adam Sandler was mixing HAPPY GILMORE 2 [laughs]. We would see him walk in and out of the hallways with his shorts and his Hawaiian shirts and stuff. And Jerry Bruckheimer randomly came into the room and asked us what we were doing. It was insane. It was like being on a different planet or something.
So is SHELBY OAKS now absolutely what you wanted when you first embarked on this journey?
Yes. As I said, we were able to go into my script and actually shoot the things we wanted to be in this movie. It’s a very strange feeling to make an indie movie and get to a day when you’re like, here’s the day where we’re going to do this thing, and then you realize the time is gone and it’s impossible. You have to abandon this thing you’ve always had in your head and hoped it would be there. Then you’re trying to recalibrate: How do I still make it work without this thing? And to have such great partners at Neon who saw the value in that and allowed us to do it–it’s indescribable, that feeling, just as a filmmaker, to be able to realize that.
Where do you go from here, now that this whole odyssey has come to an end?
The hope is, keep making movies, man. I’ve been pitching quite a bit. I have a lot of scripts that I’m pretty proud of and excited about. All of them are in the genre space in one way or another, except for one that is a drama based on of my Jehovah’s Witness youth. That one’s a tougher sell because there’s no genre hook to it; you know, nobody’s being chased. It’ll be a harder movie to get made, I think. But maybe down the line, hopefully I can make that one, because it’s very important to me.
After your many years of reviewing movies, now you’ve been on the receiving end. Has that been an interesting transition?
I think it’d be the same for any filmmaker, really. You work on something for a long time, you put it out there, and then you hope that people enjoy it or see something in it they like. Honestly, my ultimate goal is I would very much love for somebody, a young person, to see SHELBY OAKS and, like me as a teenager, be inspired to go make movies. Because it’s tough to go to the theaters anymore and see something that isn’t based off of an IP or doesn’t have a bunch of stars. To be able to have made a movie where we literally shot scenes in my friend’s backyard for almost nothing and get a wide theatrical release–I just want other people who want to make movies to see this and be like, “OK, yes, I can do it too.”
Do you think that now is an especially good time for smaller independent horror films to get out there, with movies like yours and GOOD BOY getting nationwide release?
I do. And it really makes me happy, because I believe that horror is one of the last genres where Hollywood lets filmmakers make weird things. And that’s because people like you and me go to the theater and actually watch them. The crowd shows up, you know, and Hollywood is like, “All right, fine, you guys are weird, do your thing.” I met Ben [Leonberg], the director of GOOD BOY, at Sitges in Spain, and he was wonderful. I loved his movie. BONE LAKE was really good. We’re in a fun little period here, and things are looking exciting for horror.
