The truth is out there and exclusive to IndieWire: Neon’s “Shelby Oaks” will open in U.S. theaters on October 3. The crowd-funded horror movie from YouTuber and film critic Chris Stuckmann finished three days of reshoots back in early March. The cast and crew were on location in Cleveland, Ohio, working on a newly designed sound stage and inside the real prison/museum from “The Shawshank Redemption.” The found footage effort was first made possible by a $1.39 million Kickstarter campaign and the support of executive producer Mike Flanagan, who’s mentored Stuckmann for years.
Neon acquired “Shelby Oaks” just days before it premiered at Fantasia Fest in Montreal last July. The studio was still riding high on “Longlegs,” its most successful movie to date, when Stuckmann’s paranormal mystery opened to mostly positive reviews; IndieWire gave it a “B-.” That version of “Shelby Oaks” screened again at Fright Fest U.K. before the movie — fittingly about a missing YouTuber — disappeared into the cinematic ether late last year.
Since then, IndieWire has learned that Neon has boosted the project with an undisclosed amount of supplemental funding that allowed Stuckmann to ramp up the “gore and violence.” The plot centers around a group of internet ghost hunters desperate to find out whatever happened to their friend, Riley (played by Sarah Durn). Estimates from several anonymous sources close to the production suggest the cash injection may have nearly doubled its original budget. (“Shelby Oaks” had a second ongoing fundraiser through the filmmakers’ website that ended earlier this month.)
“We were able to go back into the movie at a couple key points and really punch up some particularly bloody elements,” said Stuckmann in a fundraising video. “I can’t even express how unprecedented that is for an independent filmmaker.”
Speaking with IndieWire, producer Aaron Koontz from Paper Street Pictures described how the reshoot happened. “We were sending Neon materials, and they saw the film. They loved it, and we were very happy with what we showed at Fantasia,” Koontz said. “But when Neon read the script and looked through it, they noticed that there were scenes we didn’t film and moments we had to tone down because we couldn’t quite pull them off with the budget that we had. They said, ‘Would you have wanted to do that if you could?’”
Neon also brought in editor Brett W. Bachman (“Companion”) to give Stuckmann’s movie a “fresh edit and polish.” The new footage recontextualizes some of the original story, but the name of the game for Stuckmann and Koontz was fleshing out the practical effects. Creature actor Derek Mears, famous for playing Jason Voorhees in the 2009 “Friday the 13th” reboot, joined the cast in an undisclosed role. The team had roughly one week, plus post-production, to spend the same amount of money it took 14,720 backers on Kickstarter to pull together for the first version of “Shelby Oaks.”
The director and producer explained all this online in April, when they returned to Kickstarter after a hiatus Koontz attributes to the film nearing the finish line. The post includes a written statement from him and a video update from Stuckmann, but neither broke through to industry news. Some weeks later, the new cut started screening for test audiences in Los Angeles, and the movie reentered Hollywood’s subconscious. Several anonymous sources recounted those viewings to IndieWire. Most had not seen the earlier cut, but the few who had described this one as “better paced” and “scarier.”
Following the unprecedented success of “Terrifier 3,” extreme horror is one of a few big trends steering the genre. Koontz told IndieWire that’s not exactly what “Shelby Oaks” is going for, but that the new material will be more intense — and that Neon has no problems with “pushing the gore.” Among the production’s more ambitious goals, they reconstructed a cell from the Ohio State Reformatory where they’d previously shot on location in Mansfield, so Stuckmann could reshoot scenes from a better angle.
“It’s a dark film, so we’re leaning into that, and Neon gave us the freedom and the additional funds to do it right,” Koontz said. “We were able to ratchet things up in a pretty gnarly way, and we just can’t wait to show it to people.
“Shelby Oaks” is a long time coming, and recent comments on its Kickstarter page reflect a long history of collisions between indie projects funded online and the traditional studio system. From anxiety over Charlie Kaufman’s “Anomalisa” (later nominated for an Oscar) to that messy “Veronica Mars” revival (big enough to at least try changing the game at Hulu), even the most successful grassroots campaigns across film and TV can end in disappointment or disaster. Confusion is often a consequence.
Even after a movie has its premiere, reshoots and delays are fairly standard. A filmmaker can attend a festival, walk the red carpet, give press interviews and even acceptance speeches before finalizing their cuts for wide release. That practice is particularly common for low-budget horror movies, where extra money and time for special effects go a long way. See “Paranormal Activity,” for starters.
Still, “Shelby Oaks” set expectations high when Stuckmann promised backers “an unparalleled level of access” and “honesty and openness that you won’t find anywhere else.” Concerns from more frustrated fans range from protecting Stuckmann’s creative vision to updating home delivery addresses for future collectible DVDs and Blu-rays they bought back in 2022. Some need to change their T-shirt sizes.
“We really thought we were going to come out last year, and then this amazing thing happens with Neon, and they’re opening the door for more things to be done to the film, which then means it takes more time,” Koontz said. The producer has answered questions from backers on the public Kickstarter page, but also told IndieWire that top “Shelby Oaks” supporters get regular updates in a private Discord.
“I can understand 100 percent why [the wait] could be frustrating for backers, but I think it’ll be well worth it once it comes out and we’re fulfilling everything that we said we would do. We’re looking at some other fun things to do for backers on top of that, above and beyond what was in the Kickstarter, but I can’t go into details yet.”
Stuckmann (who did not respond to IndieWire’s request for comment) and most of his supporters on Kickstarter agree: More time and more money are unequivocally amazing assets for an indie movie. Neon reportedly acted as an international sales agent for “Shelby Oaks” out of Berlin in February (notably before the reshoots), and marked the film as its big horror play for Halloween 2025. Such a push from Neon is a huge deal, the year after “Longlegs” smashed the box office and “Anora” won Best Picture.
Refusing to share anything about the “Shelby Oaks” marketing campaign, Koontz said all will be revealed.
“I would right now do a deal with Neon to make every single Paper Street Pictures movie with them for forever. In a second, without even blinking an eye. They’re phenomenal,” the producer continued. A familiar face in indie film who has been navigating its ever-evolving challenges for years, Koontz continued, “They’re not part of the Hollywood machine. Really. They’re outside of that. They put their money where their mouth is. They’re great curators. They understand good indie cinema. They get it.”
Stuckmann’s debut feature is an abnormally important test case for genre. Its success (or failure) is a valuable data point for Neon and across key horror audiences — from the internet obsessives who made “Five Nights at Freddy’s” a pop culture moment to the Eli Roth defenders who would have a hard time explaining Roth’s The Horror Section banner to Zach Braff. (Yes, the “Scrubs” star was publicly shamed for using Kickstarter to crowdfund a “Garden State” sequel in 2013. That didn’t stop Quentin Tarantino’s protégé Roth from launching his new company and its fundraising campaign with this bizarre salesman video.)
Fans got excited online when Neon’s summer slate leaked earlier this year, but the previously reported August 22 release was never firm for “Shelby Oaks.” Neon has two more major horror titles coming soon. First, Alison Brie and Dave Franco will melt into each other on July 30 with “Together.” (From writer/director Michael Shanks, that project is currently facing plagiarism allegations and a copyright lawsuit.) Then, Oz Perkins will turn his “Longlegs”/”Monkey” victory tour into a bona-fide Neon hat-trick with “Keeper,” expected this fall.
In his Kickstarter video from April, Stuckmann attributed the decline in communication to his busy production schedule. Right now, the director is pushing to finally make this the year of “Shelby Oaks” — an occasion that, between 2023 and 2024, was already declared twice. The film will haunt U.S. theaters on October 3, when IndieWire will review Stuckmann’s feature a second time — and the ghost-hunting Paranormal Paranoids will finally answer the question, “Who took Riley Brennan?” for good.
