Following the films screening at Fantastic Fest last week, I got a chance to chat with Shelby Oaks writer and director Chris Stuckman, as well as the films leads Camille Sullivan and Sarah Durn.
1428 Elm: So to start, for Chris, I'm super intrigued by your journey to Shelby Oaks. The movie has been in the works for, I believe you said six years.
Chris: If you count when my wife and I started brainstorming, it's nine.
1428 Elm: In that time, I'm sure so much of it has changed and evolved, but what has been the constant for this film throughout its evolution from a YouTube video pitch to a nationally distributed horror film?
Chris: I think the thing that was always there from the very beginning was the idea of missing YouTubers in a found footage element. That never went away. Originally, it was entirely going to be found footage out of necessity but that was always there from the very beginning, some kind of found footage element. And also I think when I tend to think about stories, I tend to think about vibes first before, you know, story and character. My initial thought is I would love to make something just creeps me the fuck out. You know? Something very eerie and suspenseful and uncomfortable, and that was always there from the very beginning.
1428 Elm: So you mentioned found footage out of necessity. I'm wondering if you could expand on that a little bit. Like, what was it about the found footage sub-genre that made you wanna make this film in that sub-genre?
Chris: First off, I love found footage. I love good found footage, like Blair Witch. And then of course, like mockumentaries like Lake Mungo or Noroi, which are my two biggest inspirations on this movie. But, you know, when you are a YouTuber who lives in Ohio without any connections at all and you're just trying to figure out how to get something made, the notion of filming something, found footage does feel like a little more of an accessible route to just doing it yourself. You know, without having to get a lot of approval of people breathing down your neck and just trying to raise a little bit of money initially which is I think 20 k was what we were gonna try to do and just release it on YouTube. Right. But it started that way and just kept getting bigger as I would write it.
1428 Elm: I like that, and it's funny because I was actually talking to editor Patrick earlier and I mentioned how this movie kind of breaks some found footage rules. It kinda goes against the grain by being part documentary found footage and part traditionally shot narratives, and I was wondering what was the particular reason for that.
Chris: I remember exactly where I was when that idea kind of started to to come to fruition. My car was in the shop and they told me it would be like two hours. So I wandered around this parking lot of a car shop and I called my buddy Josh Lobo who directed I Trap the Devil, which is a really fun movie. You should check it out if you haven't seen it. And I was like, "Hey, man, you know the more I think about this idea of this mockumentary thing, the more I like the idea of just acknowledging that the cameras exist for part of the movie and then having fictional cameras for the rest of it that the characters don't know exist." and I was like, "Can I do that?" and he was like, you can do whatever the fuck you want. It's your movie. You make a movie, make a movie, be an artist and tell your story. He kind of just released me from that fear of like the quote unquote rules, and that's kinda where it started.
1428 Elm: I love that. So moving over to Sarah and Camille, what was it about Shelby Oaks that made you wanna join this project?
Camille: I was really attracted by the sister relationship and by the idea that of a character who's trapped in grief and in the past at the beginning, but then who's given the opportunity to be jolted into the present and then make decisions for herself, so what now? You know, what's the future gonna look like? And so I think at the one hand, a really layered character because she's has a lot of grief and a lot of emotion, but she's also pretty ballsy and she makes a lot of ballsy decisions, which I thought was pretty cool.
Sarah: Yeah, I'm a Mia Stan.
1428 Elm: Yeah, best older sister ever by the way.
Sarah: Yeah, literally going to the depths of hell for her older sister. I think I've always been somebody who's fascinated by ghosts and I I grew up watching, like, paranormal investigative shows and traumatizing my siblings with that and so I think for me, Riley is this person who's at one point attracted towards the darkness, but she's also a deeply hopeful person, and she also is really strong. Like, Riley never gives up and is fighting till the last moment. Like, even in the darkest moments of the story, she's never not fighting against what she sees as evil and I just love her so much. It's and it's been such a gift because I've been able to I see her as like a friend now and, like, I was brought on to the project in 2020 and have had the opportunity to go back and film different parts of this story throughout, like, up until this year. So it's gonna be kinda sad to let Riley go.
Chris: Yeah. Can I say something really quick? I was talking with my DP, Andrew Baird. He's also the colorist of this movie, and last night at at the premiere, we were like, "Dude, we're not working on Shelby Oaks anymore. What the fuck?"
1428 Elm: Your baby bird has left the nest. What are you gonna do now?
Chris: Well, hopefully something else.
1428 Elm: Yeah. Well, I was a bit nervous to bring that up. Are there any plans for what you might be doing next, whether it be a sequel or something else?
Chris: I have a prequel idea for this movie. I have a sequel idea for this movie. I don't know if it'll happen but I got ideas. Then in regards to the next thing, yeah, I've been pitching a lot. I just did a pitch a couple days ago and it went really well. It's actually for a thriller, like an action thriller, and we'll see how that goes. But yeah, I mean, I love genre. I probably will always stay in the genre space somehow. It's where I feel most, I don't know, comfortable is the wrong word. I feel safe and welcomed in genre space. This movie is dark and violent and tragic but I felt happy every day. The horror crowd, and you know this, we get all of our demons out in the movies and then like we're the nicest, most welcoming fandom.
1428 Elm: Absolutely.
Chris: The horror community is the most welcome. Queer, trans, doesn't matter. Everyone's welcome. Come play, be with us. It's like the one last good nontoxic fandom. You know what I mean? But we all watch really fucked up shit, so it doesn't make any sense.
1428 Elm: Isn't that ironic? And, you mentioned having a fun time with this film. Y'all film on a lot of creepy fucking sets in this movie. Like, the prison, the abandoned fairground. Did y'all have a particularly favorite, set to work on?
Camille: They were all pretty great, but I'm gonna go with the prison. I'm gonna take it just because it's like, what an opportunity to go in and even see that and to see it at night and to be able to, like, explore around. It was so cool and it had so much energy in it. Like, you could just feel the history of it being in there. And it was just creepy and cool and beautiful too. It was wonderful.
Chris: Yeah. I remember when we were before we were shooting that, that it was like, I told you I was like, "You know, we have a real prison, right?", because it's scripted as this six story thing. On an indie movie, it's like, "Are we gonna have that?" you know? But it was like, "No, it's, let's go. We're gonna do it".
1428 Elm: I love that.
Sarah: Yeah. I would also shout out the abandoned amusement park. That's a real place that Chris found that is, you know, the Ferris wheel is there. It is still there right now, and I think one of the more surreal moments was, you know, in the film, Mia and Riley, our characters have this thing they do where they carve R and M into trees as sort of a marker that, like, I was here. And I did that at the amusement park as Riley and put R and M in the tree. And it was like over a year and a half of decay.
Chris: Over a year and a half's worth of decay had happened to that carving when Camille touches it in the movie. You know, we don't have to dress it or anything, which is pretty great. On that amusement park really quick, there's a portion in the mockumentary where you see eight millimeter footage of an amusement park in operation. That's the real place. That's from the 1960s, real eight millimeter footage we found. So when you cut to that Ferris wheel in that, and then we cut to the real one, it's the same Ferris wheel, the roller coaster to the modern day, same thing, the teacups. And my mom really did go there as a little girl, like all the time. Like, when I went there, took a picture of the Ferris wheel and I was like, she was like, I've sat in that, which is really cool.
1428 Elm: Now it's in your debut horror film. That's such a cool full circle moment. I love the set pieces in this film. I really do. Especially the fairground because now on my drive home, there's like this gated area that has like a bunch of like a foreign carnival equipment. It's just behind like a locked gate. I drive by there at night a lot. I can see the shadows of like a carousel and it always gives me the jitters while I'm driving home late at night.
Chris: So there's something about a place that is filled with happy memories that looks like that now. It's like, people had a lot of joy here and now it's rotting. There's something very creepy about that.
1428 Elm: Yeah. I've seen that a time or two and it's always just the most eerie, just I shouldn't be here anymore feeling. So I absolutely love that. So, Sarah and Camille, were there any specific horror performances that either of y'all pulled inspiration from to your characters for this film? I'm super curious about that.
Camille: The honest answer is no, not really. I try not to pull from other people's performances if I can avoid it. No doubt I do, you know, because I am a movie fan and I'm a horror fan, so I'm sure it's in there. But I try not to because I just want it to come from an authentic and human place.
Sarah: Yeah. I'd echo that to some degree. There wasn't like a specific person I was trying to emulate, but I feel like when you're a lover of movies and a lover of horror films, all that sort of seeps into your It's in there. Like, here's so many movies. I mean, the reason we're all here is because we love movies and we love storytelling and we wanna be a part of it. And in the story, we wanna get, like, even closer to the thing. So, yeah, it's such a gift as an actor to be able to get inside a story and really embody it. I love that.
1428 Elm: And as far as, like, embodying the roles, I mean, Sarah, your character, without getting too much of the spoilers for the for the readers of this interview, goes through quite the evolution in this film. I mean, for better or worse.
Sarah: She has a time.
1428 Elm: She does.
Sarah: She sees some shit.
1428 Elm: So what was the hardest part about going through that arc as an actress?
Sarah: Yeah. It was intense. Like, I think the early Riley footage, the found footage elements, that version of Riley is very accessible to me. I think luckily, I haven't had more of the horrible things happen to me that Riley has to go through. So I think I really relied on research. I did a lot of research into what it's like, hearing women's stories about who were taken or went missing and what those experiences are like and how your brain kinda shifts. And I have a background as a journalist, so research is really important to me. But my favorite thing is to be on a film set and have a great time and, like, chat up people. So I it was really important for me to be able to tap into that in the scene and then be able to leave it there. I actually worked with my acting coach, Ken Chats, to develop some tricks and techniques to go there and then leave it behind at work because I wanted to still have a wonderful experience on set and be able to laugh and have fun. Learning to just leave that behind is part of that.
1428 Elm: I definitely saw that through your performance. It just that evolution is so heartbreaking at times, and I think you embody that so very well.
Sarah: Thank you.
1428 Elm: Camilla, your character is so hell bent on solving this mystery. Like, you are like a force of nature in this movie trying to just, plow through, whether it's cops, whether it's supernatural occurrences. Like, she's, going to literal hell to pull back your sister. So I'm curious, what was your process for channeling all of this, you know, the drive and intensity for your character and carry that through the majority of the film?
Camille: Well, I did research as well, but I'll tell you on the front of my script, I had a couple things written and the one was you can't make a mistake, and the other one was, obsession is the lazy man's word for dedication. So I just tried to go back to that every time. Like, if I make a mistake, she dies. If I make a mistake, something terrible happens. I don't know what it is, but my belief is, at the start of the movie, she's alive. I'm the only one who believes it, but I have to carry that as a reality the whole time. Like, if you know someone you love is out there maybe suffering, would you not go to the ends of the earth?
1428 Elm: I love that aspect about your character, that you are unwavering in your belief that she's alive. I just want end on one more question for Chris. What is it that you hope horror fans take from Shelby Oaks?
Chris: I honestly, is the real answer is having been so inspired by horror my whole life, I genuinely think it saved my life reading Goosebumps books in third grade and discovering writing and watching X-Files and stuff that I shouldn't have been watching, you know? It made me who I am. And if there is anybody, even one person who sees this movie and thinks, "I can maybe make a movie too", then that would genuinely mean the world to me.