In this Fantastic Fest interview, Chris Stuckmann, Camille Sullivan, and Sarah Durn talk about their twisted horror film Shelby Oaks.
Director Chris Stuckmann, along with stars Camille Sullivan and Sarah Durn, sat down with me for Mama’s Geeky at Fantastic Fest 2025 to discuss their horror film, Shelby Oaks. The movie, which blends found footage with a documentary style, follows a woman investigating her sister’s disappearance after she was a member of a paranormal investigative team.
In this interview, the trio discusses the film’s evolution, the challenges of filming in different styles, and their own personal experiences with the paranormal.
Shelby Oaks: From YouTube Skits to Feature Film
Mama’s Geeky: What was the evolution from the first initial thought of Shelby Oaks to what the final product was?
Chris Stuckmann: It started when my wife and I would do YouTube sketches, and we did these Halloween specials every year. On the fourth year, we decided to do a movie about YouTubers disappearing in a cabin in the woods. We went to a cabin in Tennessee and shot the segments ourselves with no crew. On the drive home, we had so much fun that we said we were tired of waiting around and wanted to make something ourselves. The first seed for Shelby was that. It was just going to be about missing YouTubers. I wanted to make a YouTube feature film and put it on my channel for nothing. And that’s how it started.
Filming Found Footage & Documentary Style
Mama’s Geeky: I want to talk to you specifically about the found footage aspect of Shelby Oaks. Can you talk about filming those scenes?
Sarah Durn: It was so fun to shoot the found footage aspects. Chris gave us so much freedom to just play. It felt so organic because it was just me, the other paranormal investigators, and Chris most days. And sometimes Chris’s friend Joe, shout out to Joe. But it was so easy as an actor because you were just doing the thing that you would have done. It wasn’t a huge crew, and there weren’t a bunch of lights. It was so minimal. Because of that, it was such a playground as an actor to just be and exist in a world. It was so easy to put yourself in 2008 YouTube. I’ve always been a fan of spooky stories, and I grew up in Ohio also like Chris. I had this map of haunted Ohio that had little icons for every Bigfoot sighting and UFO sighting. So it just felt very natural that here I was playing a paranormal investigator on YouTube. I was just like, “Yes, this is my dream job.”
Mama’s Geeky: Camille, for you, I want to talk about the documentary aspect of it and filming those where you’re just sitting down talking to a camera. What was that like?
Camille Sullivan: Actually, that’s a pretty comfortable place to be as far as acting goes. You’ve got your one spot that you just sit in. And then it’s real, like, if I was giving an interview, you’re just talking. That’s all you have to do, and the emotion comes up like it does in an interview. It’s one of the most straightforward pieces of it for me.
Chris Stuckmann: You are not giving yourself enough credit. That is bullshit. Listen, Camille, the script contained B-roll that’s in the movie. Whether it’s a Ferris wheel, the car graveyard, or any of the abandoned stuff, it’s all scripted and intercut with her lines. So she has to know for about 17 pages of the script what the documentary has just shown and then recalibrate emotionally and provide the response necessary for the B-roll that we’ve just seen. And you did that so seamlessly. That didn’t feel like that was an easy one. This is not an easy thing. She’s great.
Working with the Newton Brothers On Shelby Oaks
Mama’s Geeky: Can you talk about that collaborative process with The Newton Brothers?
Chris Stuckmann: We have the Newton Brothers and James Burkholder who did our score. James has been an assistant of theirs for a long time, and this is his first name credit next to them, which is really exciting. He’s such a great composer. The Newtons… oh my God, yes. It was so crazy because when I was writing the script, I was listening to their scores for Hill House and Dr. Sleep, just typing while listening. I had no dreams of them ever actually composing anything for the movie. They are so excited about movies. The first Zoom we had, we just geeked out about John Williams and Michael Giacchino and all these amazing composers. Even though they’ve done so many scores at this point, they’re still like children about it. They’re so excited. And James too, because, as I said, it’s his first name credit. He sat next to me for every single day of the sound mix, just making sure the score sounded the right way. I would work with either of them a million times over. They’re so talented.
Mama’s Geeky: The both of you get pretty dirty in Shelby Oaks, Sarah, you more than Camille. What was that makeup process like?
Camille Sullivan: I feel like I got off a lot easier than Sarah did. There was a day where I saw her come out in her wardrobe, and I was just like, “Oh my God, what have they done to you?” Horrifying. But you know, I feel like, sure, when you’re traumatized and get splashed with blood, I could see you leaving it. It’s like someone comes up to you to clean you, and you’re like, “Fuck away from me.” You know what I mean? “I just need to be alone.” And you had a mission in that moment.
Sarah Durn: I was so dirty. All kudos to the makeup artists who worked on this. I was in the chair for like three hours before shooting, getting very, very, very dirty. I think the most annoying thing is they’d always come in and put this glue on your lips to make them look really chapped. Your lips literally stick together, and you’re like, “You feel like…” It looks great on camera, but you can’t fully move. It seemed like you hadn’t brushed your teeth in a long time. They even brush teeth stuff on, and you’re like, “Hey, the dirt is getting closer.” What’s a little chemicals? That’s for the art.
Shelby Oaks Filmmakers & Cast Talk Paranormal Experiences
Mama’s Geeky: Have any of you had what you would consider a paranormal experience.
Chris Stuckmann: My mom did once. When she was younger, she and my sister, who was a baby at the time, moved into this house. Every time they put up wallpaper, it would peel away, and the lights would always go out. One night, my dad was working on the railroad, so my mom was alone with my sister. She would hear this screeching sound come out of the basement. Many people have validated this story. One night, she had a bunch of friends over because she was scared, and they all heard this high-pitched screeching sound come out of the basement. They came to learn that the previous owner of the house had a son who slept on a mattress on the floor in the basement and said that he could speak to his dead dad through the mattress. That has always been in my mind.
Camille Sullivan: I do, but it’s going to make me sound crazy. I think there’s a ghost in my apartment building. Things fall off the walls periodically. It’s a playful one, though. I told this story yesterday, and this is why I sound crazy. I was drinking a glass of water, and I was by myself. I put it to my lips, and it felt like someone went, “Pff,” and then I spilled it all down my front. I’m not that klutzy, so I don’t know. I’d love a ghost to blame all my klutzy moves on. “Oh, it was the ghost.”
Sarah Durn: I had one experience with my brother and sister. We were all staying in upstate Michigan in this old Victorian hotel. I’m super into ghosts, so I was like, “Oh, this could be cool.” We all went to bed and woke up, and our beds were shaking. We thought there was maybe an earthquake, and we went to my mom and dad’s room and asked if they felt that, and they said, “No.” I was like, “I don’t like that.” So, the next day, I went up to the front desk and asked, “Hey, do you have any ghosts here?” And they gave me a binder. The room we were staying in was where someone had killed themselves. There were all these newspaper clippings. I was like, “I found a real one.” I am just Riley. That’s insane.
Designing A Terrifying Creature for Shelby Oaks
Mama’s Geeky: I do want to talk about the design of the creature that is featured in Shelby Oaks. Is that what you always pictured?
Chris Stuckmann: Yes. I have a notebook filled with a lot of horrible things I’ve drawn over the years that I don’t want my children to ever find. It was just a notebook filled with a lot of sketches and collages of other things I had seen that I thought were inspirational. When we got this amazing creature designer named Carlos Juante, he’s worked on Dune, Prometheus, and Blade Runner 2049. He also helped design one of the aliens in Signs, which was the movie that made me want to make movies. It was really surreal to talk to him. He sent us a lot of sketches based on some of my ideas. And as soon as I saw them, I was like, “Oh, this is a real concept artist.” This guy was so incredible.
Then we worked with Jason Hamer, who did the actual construction of the suit. He just wrapped up Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. He’s an amazing designer. We were able to work with Derek Mears, who embodied this entity. He was Jason in the Friday the 13th remake from ’09, and he was also an alien in Signs. He’s, if you watch Signs, the alien on the roof where Mel Gibson looks out the window, that’s him. He’s six foot eight, and you meet him and think, “This guy could just make me into a sandwich.” But he’s the sweetest person, the very definition of a gentle giant. He just regaled me with so many amazing stories of all his time on movies. He was just an amazing person.
Mama’s Geeky: For the two of you, what is it like being face-to-face with the creature?
Camille Sullivan: It was a little daunting for sure. I mean, he was such a nice guy, so that made it easier because you don’t want to actually be afraid of the person. But he was a pro, and it looked so great. So it was just like to have you staring up at this terrifying thing, I mean, you get a lot just from that, just from taking it and just for a second imagining, “What if this was real?”
Sarah Durn: I was actually hanging out with Derek as he was getting the costume on because I was bored. I kind of ended up watching him get into costume, and it’s so wild. There is something kind of demystifying about it when you start seeing zippers. I have a photo on my phone that will never see the light of day. It’s of that suit’s butt because I was like, “Whoa, man.”
Mama’s Geeky: Can you talk about blending the found footage, documentary style, and traditional film style in Shelby Oaks in a way that works for audiences?
Chris Stuckmann: That was really important for me because that was the initial sort of… that’s when the script that was a YouTube movie became something else when I thought, “Man, that’d be cool if I could do that.” In the script, it became very much like everything was written very specifically. This is when it happens; this is how it happens. And the discussion of the aspect ratio change and things along those lines were also important with my DP, Andrew Baird, who’s a genius.
We were just really clear, like, “This is visually how it has to happen.” If we are to take the audience from one place to another emotionally, it has to happen in a moment that is shocking or that is able to actually make them feel as if… because it is. It’s a very shocking thing narratively to be told a story one way and then be like, “I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you this way and yank you out of that.” It has to be narratively shocking and also feel that way when you’re watching it. I think it’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. I think we really pulled it off.
Mama’s Geeky: How would you describe Shelby Oaks in three to five words?
Chris Stuckmann: Creepy, eerie, mysterious.
Camille Sullivan: Terrifying, heartbreaking, brutal, dirty.
Sarah Durn: The bonds between sisters.