Shelby Oaks begins with a mystery. A group of young adults calling themselves the Paranormal Paranoids, led by Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), set out to investigate an abandoned amusement park for their YouTube channel. They’re never seen again, though the story of their disappearance goes viral, turning them into cult internet celebrities. A decade later, the world has mostly moved on, but Riley’s sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) sets out to solve the mystery, and uncovers something truly horrifying.
For Chris Stuckmann, who built a successful YouTube reviewing movies before making the pivot to filmmaking with Shelby Oaks, this movie is an exploration of childhood trauma and the way it can worm its way deeper into our lives if we never face it head-on.
“We all experience things in our youth that stay with us, some worse than others,” Stuckmann tells Polygon.
Ahead of the film’s release, Stuckmann helped us break down all of Shelby Oaks’ biggest twists and turns in what feels like one of the most disturbing horror movies of the year. Shelby Oaks goes to some dark places. Luckily, Stuckmann was kind enough to be our guide.
Shelby Oaks explores themes of sexual assault. Below, we discuss the film’s entire plot, including several scenes from the ending that may be triggering for some readers.
Shelby Oaks and the Incubus
The mystery at the start of Shelby Oaks is eventually traced back to an incubus, a male demon referenced in ancient culture and known for having sexual intercourse with women, sometimes while they sleep. In the film, this particular incubus has been stalking both Riley and Mia since they were children, staring at them through a cracked window in Riley’s bedroom.
Years later, the incubus seizes the opportunity to capture Riley (and murder all of her YouTuber friends), and with the help from a family under its thrall, attempts to impregnate her with its spawn.
The demon is only revealed later in the film, and Stuckmann says he wanted to give it a timeless design. “It needs to feel like a wound that never healed.”
Early on in the development process, he drew up his own concepts for the incubus.
“I have a notebook filled with sketches I made that’s really disturbing,” Stuckmann says, “a notebook filled with crazy thoughts and drawings and images that maybe I’ll share one day.”
He shared those sketches with Carlos Huante, an “incredible concept artist” whose credits include Dune, Blade Runner 2049, and Prometheus. Huante came back with creature designs that “blew my mind,” Stuckmann says.
Next, he worked with Jason Hamer, an Emmy-winning practical effects designer fresh off Christopher Nolan’s upcoming saga The Odyssey, to design a monster suit. And finally, stuntman Derek Mears, who played Jason in the Friday the 13th movies, stepped into the costume.
“Derek has played so many awful people in movies,” Stuckmann says, “but he is the genuinely nicest, most angelic human being you will ever meet, who also happens to be 6-foot-8.”
That scene with the photo album
Near the end of Shelby Oaks, Mia ends up in an old house with an old woman named Norma (Robin Bartlett). Mia can tell she’s close to finding her sister — and she’s right — but before that can happen, she stumbles upon a collection of photographs that reveal exactly what happened to Riley after she disappeared.
The photos show Riley being forced to marry Norma’s son, a mentally unbalanced man who’s seemingly possessed by the devil (his violent suicide earlier in the film kicks off Mia’s investigation). We see photos of Riley posing while pregnant, and then photos of her standing in front of a series of small graves outside the house, implying several miscarriages. It’s a disturbing revelation that plays out entirely in silence, as if Shelby Oaks suddenly shifts from movie to slideshow. But for Stuckmann, the photo album was the best way to deliver this terrible twist.
“I think that showing, not telling is probably the most effective way in any story to approach something like that,” he says.
Earlier versions of the scene featured even more photos. Stuckmann says they took “like 1,000 photos,” many of which were cut “because of how graphic and dark they were.”
The filmmaker adds that conveying this information through photographs also adds a second, subtler layer of horror to the experience.
“The thing that disturbs me the most about it is: Most families who have a photo album, it’s of their happiest, most cherished memories,” Stuckmann says. “If you look at this photo album, and imagine that this woman is doing that, putting her happiest, most cherished memories in this photo album, and then you look at what she’s putting in it, that’s really fucked-up.”
Shelby Oaks’ ending, explained
Mia eventually finds Riley and her baby locked in Norma’s basement, and rescues them both. (Norma sacrifices herself during a ritual that the sisters witness.) But this is a horror movie, so the happy ending feels unlikely.
Back home, everything seems fine. Riley is clearly traumatized, but appears to be recovering quickly. The baby is happy and healthy, despite being concieved through some sort of demonic ritual paired with sexual assault. But that night, Riley attempts to murder the baby, telling Mia that it’s evil and needs to be destroyed. Mia tries to stop her, and Riley falls out of the window of their house and dies.
Meanwhile, the incubus steps out of the shadow and places its hand on Mia’s shoulder. Mia screams as she realizes that she, not Riley, was the monster’s ultimate target all along. (The baby matters, too, I think.)
For Stuckmann, this is where Shelby Oaks’ core metaphor comes into play: the idea that childhood trauma can seep into our lives and take root. The incubus is that trauma, something that’s haunted Mia and Riley since they were children, but never really went away.
“We all experience things in our youth that stay with us,” Stuckmann says. “Some have legitimate childhood trauma. For others, maybe we saw something that kind of disturbed us, an image we’re never able to get out of our minds.”
The broken window in Riley’s childhood bedroom also acts as an extended metaphor.
“This crack in the window has always been there,” Stuckmann says. “The way I see that is: If something happens that creates a rift in us at a young age in our lives, if we never try to fix it, if we never try to look for help, if we never tell someone about it, it will grow and it will spiderweb, and it will shatter us. It will eventually eat us alive.”
It’s unclear what happens next. It’s hard to imagine Mia going along with the situation she’s been placed in, forced to raise her dead sister’s demonic baby. Will the incubus force her into subservience or simply kill her, too?
Then again, as Stuckmann points out, Mia’s character says earlier in the film that she wanted a child. So perhaps she’ll ultimately accept this awful bargain.
“Sometimes, to get something you want, you have to sacrifice something you have,” Stuckmann says. “Every single character in this movie goes through that in some way. The Paranormal Paranoids want fame; they get it. Mia wanted a family. She eventually gets one, but she sacrifices her sister in the process.”
Shelby Oaks is in theaters now.
