How Chris Stuckmann made his horror film

Courtesy of Chris Stuckmann

Maybe it’s his love of horror, but Chris Stuckman was fearless in making his film Shelby Oaks. A few days before its world premiere at the Fantasia Festival, he laughingly admits that he’s been “thinking about audience reaction for probably five years.” Fortunately, he’s created a brave film that stands up alongside many of his favorites.

A lifelong filmmaker — he made his first film at 15, “about a magical baseball field inspired by ‘Field of Dreams'” — Stuckmann rose to fame as an early YouTube star, a dedicated and candid film critic who has amassed over two million followers since launching his channel 13 years ago. He began his career as a critic sitting on his bed in front of two “Dark Knight” posters, and kept his incisive criticism accessible to the average moviegoer — even as his sets and camerawork became more professional.

Soon, his life as a professional YouTuber allowed him to quit his job as a school bus driver, but he always wrote personal projects and developed short films on the side. The real inspiration came when he was filming his then-annual Halloween special in 2016, for which he rented a cabin in the woods of Tennessee with his wife, Samantha Elizabeth, to talk – appropriately – about “cabin in the woods” movies.

“We did this whole sketch about a masked maniac in the woods with a knife trying to kill us,” he says. “It was sometimes told from the killer’s perspective and sometimes from ours, and we did it ourselves. We had no crew. It’s one of my fondest memories with my wife. On the way home from Tennessee, we had a six-hour drive back to Ohio, and we were talking, and we realized this was easy and fun, and we were both very tired of waiting to do something at that point. We had been trying to get something off the ground for a very long time, and nothing was happening. And we decided, ‘Let’s just try to self-fund something told from the perspective of missing YouTubers.'”

That idea became “Shelby Oaks.” After further fleshing out the concept, Stuckmann met with Paper Street Pictures during the 2019 Fantastic Fest, and the project got rolling. He became even more motivated when a Kickstarter campaign he launched in March 2022 to extend filming for more days and pay for necessities like paying the crew and getting the right equipment surpassed its $250,000 goal in two days, ultimately raising $1,390,845 from 14,720 backers.

While Stuckmann keeps the plot points of “Shelby Oaks” secret to keep the twists exciting, the film is about a woman trying to find her sister, a YouTube paranormal investigator who has been missing for 12 years. Given the subject matter, fans don’t know much about what kind of film will emerge: Will it be completely handheld? Shot like a YouTube video? Will it be full of slang and inside jokes about online culture? While Stuckmann and his cinematographer Andrew Scott Baird play a bit with form and structure to advance some elements of the story, “Shelby Oaks” is a distinctly cinematic affair. Shots are deliberately blocked out to squeeze the tension out of scenes that are both scary and dramatic, in a way that goes far beyond most online content.

“(Baird) was one of the main reasons I realized we should probably do a Kickstarter project,” says Stuckmann. “Even in our discussions, we realized we wouldn’t have the funds to accomplish what we wanted to do. With his encouragement, I thought, ‘Okay, we should probably try it,’ because the shot list we were creating and the storyboards we were doing were just more challenging than we initially thought. That came through weeks of discussions with Andrew, just looking at other examples of what could be done in the indie horror space and really figuring out how much certain things would cost.”

Once filming began, the crew was so involved in the project that, despite his internet fame, he wasn’t worried about being labeled as anything other than a filmmaker on set, Stuckmann says.

“On day one, I was very aware that I was a newbie to this,” he says. “At least that’s the perception: This is my first time doing anything behind a camera, even though I’ve been making films since I was a kid. That’s OK, and I understood that. I wanted to put people at ease from day one. We had this whole speech about wanting people to feel safe and to report anything that made them uncomfortable, but also about them being able to come to me with any problem they had. Or even anything that came to mind as an idea that they might see, or something that they thought might be valuable for a scene. A lot of times we used a lot of those ideas that people had, because I felt like the film was a communal experience.”

“Shelby Oaks” has received two major nods in the horror community in recent weeks: the announcement that “The Haunting of Hill House” creator Mike Flanagan has signed on as executive producer, and that red-hot distributor Neon has acquired the film – just days after the successful launch of Oz Perkins’ “Longlegs.”

Flanagan and Stuckmann have known each other since the filmmaker contacted them about Stuckmann’s review of his 2013 film “Oculus.” From then on, the two began corresponding and Flanagan offered to read one of Stuckmann’s scripts.

“He gave me notes and feedback, and that was extremely valuable,” says Stuckmann. “This kind of
changed our relationship in that we talked about nerdy stuff, but we also took notes and gave feedback on scripts and things like that.”

When Stuckmann ran the Kickstarter campaign for “Shelby Oaks,” Flanagan asked if he could read the script and was brought on board with the project.

“I came back and asked him for comments on the very first rough cut,” he says. “From then on, he asked, ‘How can I help?’ From then on, it was a huge blessing.”

In an email to diversityFlanagan says he is “impressed by Chris’ work ethic, his intellect, his talent and his determination.”

“I followed his Kickstarter campaign for ‘Shelby’ with great interest when it really took off,” he continues. “I funded my own little film, ‘Absentia’, on Kickstarter in 2010, and that brought back that roar. His determination and his do-it-yourself attitude really reminded me of what it felt like when I first started out. I watched his fundraising videos and thought back to my own Kickstarter campaign and what it was like to try and create your own opportunities in a business that’s hard to get into. He was out there and making it, putting everything he had into this dream, with the combined efforts of his friends and family, and that just inspired me.”

As for the Neon deal, Stuckmann says he feels like a soul mate with the team.

“They love movies,” he says. “When we met in person, there were just a bunch of references to movies that we love. They love movies so much and they care about the filmmaker too. They want to make sure everyone involved is excited about making movies. It’s kind of weird to say that, but it’s just a warm, safe place.”

As for the future, Stuckmann is focused on filmmaking and reducing YouTube reviews, but he’s always excited to use his platform to champion great films. But he also hopes to use YouTube to illustrate the actual process of filmmaking so more viewers understand how much work goes into a feature film.

“If it were a perfect world, I could continue to make films and occasionally talk about films that I love, but also
“I want to give people on my channel a behind-the-scenes look at whatever I’m working on,” says Stuckmann. “I want to let them participate in the filmmaking process in a way that maybe hasn’t been done as much. My ultimate goal is to lift the veil a little bit and show people how a lot of these things get made, because a lot of people who talk about how films are made online tend to gloss over or gloss over some things.”

Flanagan says he was happy to offer his friend any support he could on his journey to making Shelby Oaks a reality.

“Chris’ experiences and his story reminded me so much of what I went through at the beginning of my career,” he says. “He’s on a really exciting journey and it’s been a pleasure to share a few small steps along the way with him.”