Movies
‘Shelby Oaks’ – New Poster Pays Tribute to Everyone Who Backed the Movie’s Crowd-Funding Campaign
YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann makes his feature debut with the upcoming Shelby Oaks, a horror movie that was making headlines before the cameras even started rolling. Stuckmann turned to crowd-funding to bring the project to life, you may recall, and Shelby Oaks ended up becoming the highest-funded horror film in the history of Kickstarter with over $1 million.
That allowed Stuckmann to bring the deeply personal horror tale to the screen, and Shelby Oaks was subsequently boarded by Mike Flanagan as Executive Producer and acquired for distribution by the indie horror heavyweights over at NEON. It’s a dream scenario for any filmmaker, and Stuckmann isn’t forgetting the backers who made it all happen.
NEON has released a brand new poster for Shelby Oaks this morning that pays tribute to everyone who supported the film’s original crowd-funding campaign. The names of all 14,720 backers have been incorporated into the background, all of them coming together to form a creepy image. Click here to download the full-res image and see if you can spot your own name!
A traditional narrative that incorporates found footage elements, Shelby Oaks hits theaters on October 24.
Can’t wait until then? NEON and Bloody Disgusting are joining forces for a series of free sneak screenings on October 8 in select locations! Here’s everything you need to know.
Shelby Oaks is about missing paranormal investigators, the dark legacy they uncovered, and the far-reaching effects their investigation has as Mia searches for her sister Riley, the lead paranormal investigator, 12 years later. The film’s official synopsis continues…
“As Mia uncovers new and disturbing leads related to Riley’s disappearance, she uncovers evidence of a hidden supernatural evil dating all the way back to her and Riley’s childhood.”
Shelby Oaks has been rated “R” for “violent content/gore, suicide and language.”
NEON previews, “What started as a tale about missing YouTubers eventually transformed into something with deeper, darker implications for its characters, and it wasn’t until post-production, that Stuckmann realized the film was a much more personal project than he had initially conceived. Stuckmann was raised in a faith (Jehovah’s Witness) that practices shunning. At twelve years old, his sister was excommunicated and he was forced to shun her. Cutting off all communication, he was told his sister was ‘spiritually dead.’
“It wasn’t until Stuckmann’s early twenties when he finally escaped the faith, that he reconnected with his sister. It became clear that the story behind Shelby Oaks – about someone’s desperate yearning to find a lost loved one as seemingly insurmountable forces keep them apart – is inspired by his own search for his sister.”
Watch the film’s final official trailer below.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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