Shelby Oaks (2025) Coming Soon from Altitude

THE CHILLING FOUND FOOTAGE HORROR FROM CHRIS STUCKMANN AVAILABLE ON DVD, BLU-RAY & DIGITAL FROM 15TH DECEMBER

In Shelby Oaks a woman’s desperate search for her long-lost sister falls into obsession upon realising that the imaginary demon from their childhood may have been real.

Starring Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, and Michael Beach, Shelby Oaks is a one-of-a-kind horror that defies genre conventions, delivering a uniquely immersive and terrifying journey.

Shelby Oaks marks the debut feature from Chris Stuckmann, with assured visual storytelling and razor-sharp tension, it boldly announces the arrival of a compelling new voice in genre cinema. One of the most highly anticipated horror films to hit cinemas in 2025, SciFiNow labelled the film “nightmarish, traumatising and terrifying“.

Shelby Oaks is among the top funded horror film projects on Kickstarter, attracting over 4500 backers and the support of acclaimed horror filmmaker and executive producer Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, Midnight Mass).

A film made by horror fans for horror fans, Shelby Oaks will be available to own at home on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital on 15th December.

Director’s Statement:

“It was 2016, and my wife and I were shooting our 4th Annual Halloween Special, a festive series of videos we published to YouTube each October to celebrate spooky season. That year, we adopted a theme ‘Cabin in the Woods’ horror movies, and we filmed the Special in a cabin deep in the backwoods of Tennessee. We also shot a wraparound segment that featured a mask-wearing, knife-wielding lunatic who documents their kills with a VHS camcorder. On the drive home, we were inspired and discussed adapting the segment into a feature that focused on paranormal researchers who disappear.

But what started as a tale about missing YouTubers eventually transformed into something with deeper, darker implications for its characters. The script was uncommonly structured and I was an untested filmmaker, so generating interest in the film was damn near impossible. Finally, after many months of failed financing attempts, and despite many folks warning against it, I launched a crowdfunding campaign, uncertain of its prospects. To my shock, Shelby Oaks became the highest-funded horror film in the history of Kickstarter, taking in nearly $1.4million. Immensely grateful, and more than a little daunted by the sudden enormity of the project, we set out to make the film.

I didn’t realise it until post-production, but this became a much more personal project than I had initially conceived. We follow Mia, played by the immensely talented Camille Sullivan, as she searches for her sister, who’s been missing for twelve years. The world believes her sister is dead, yet Mia plows forward, convinced her search isn’t in vain. I was raised in a faith that practices shunning, and when I was twelve, my sister left that faith. I was forced to shun her, and as a result, I cut off all communication with her. I was told my sister was “spiritually dead,” and despite knowing she was alive and well, we didn’t reconnect until my early twenties, after I finally escaped that faith. So it only makes sense that I’d identify with a story about someone’s desperate yearning to find a lost loved one, as seemingly insurmountable forces keep them apart.

With Shelby Oaks, I looked to brilliant films like Joel Anderson’s Lake Mungo, a pseudo-documentary that expertly generates familial terror through the looming knowledge that something awful is going to happen, and there’s little that can be done about it. M.Night Shyamalan’s work on The Sixth Sense and Signs was also a great influence; his uncanny ability to generate tension out of thin air always on my mind. I studied found footage movies and true crime docs, and looked for ways to embrace what I love about both. All those failed financing attempts could be traced back to the fact that a movie like Shelby Oaks didn’t have a proven roadmap. I couldn’t say, “It’s this meets this.” Which is why I’m so grateful to those backers who made the film possible, and to NEON for all their incredible support.

Nine years ago, my wife and I shot a YouTube sketch that has now evolved into a feature film. Over the course of making it, I became a father to twins, and a pandemic shut down the globe. Most filmmakers say that every film they make changes them, and indeed, while making Shelby Oaks, the axis of my entire world shifted. And I couldn’t be happier.“

– Chris Stuckmann, Writer / Director