Chris Stuckmann's Shelby Oaks opens in theatres Oct. 24.Chris Pizzello/The Associated Press
There is a perhaps unsurprisingly long history of film critics turned filmmakers, stretching back to the early days of Cahiers du Cinema, where Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut developed their voices in print before taking over the screen.
Chris Stuckmann wouldn’t dare put himself in conversation with members of the French New Wave, but he is a film-criticism pioneer all his own, first uploading his wry and considered reviews (focusing on horror movies) during the early days of YouTube. Today, Stuckmann has more than two million subscribers who hinge on his every new video – and in 2021, he took that fated leap into directing, signing on to make a horror movie of his own, Shelby Oaks.
A Blair Witch Project for the influencer era, Shelby Oaks is too familiar to go viral
Following the hunt for a group of amateur paranormal investigators who go missing – a neat riff on how Stuckmann, who didn’t go to film or journalism school, once considered himself an amateur – Shelby Oaks is obviously the work of a committed cinephile, engineered with tremendous passion for the work that the director grew up critiquing. And yet, today, Stuckmann wouldn’t call himself a critic at all.
Ahead of Shelby Oaks’ release this weekend, Stuckmann spoke with The Globe and Mail about the line between reviewer and reviewee.
Stuckmann made the film using Kickstarter, and had a documentarian follow him during the shoot to show funders the ins and outs of making an indie movie.Courtesy of Elevation Pictures
I read a recent interview in which you said you don’t consider yourself to be a critic. Is that a recent shift in thinking?
It’s an art form in itself, criticism. But having discovered filmmaking when I was 14, when my mom bought me a camcorder which I used to make about 300 short films, I came to this all as a filmmaker first. That’s always where my head has been. When I started my YouTube channel I was 21, I didn’t have any friends in my Jehovah’s Witness community who liked movies as much as I did. We would go to see a movie, and I wanted to talk about it for hours. But they were like, “Chris, we’re done talking about Homeward Bound now.” So I went on YouTube, which was only a few years old at that time, but it wasn’t considered a viable way of becoming press.
I would assume you were actually looked down by studios because of it.
Yeah. The idea of being a film critic is something you can 100 per cent call me. I was in the Critics Choice Association. I get screeners. But in 2021, when I got this movie greenlit, I announced that I wouldn’t be speaking about any films that I didn’t like. It didn’t feel right to me, making a film but also being a critic. And much to my chequebook’s detriment, too, because I think about 40 per cent of the movies I watch, I don’t review. And if I don’t make a video, that’s a pay cut. But I will say I’m a happier person now having made that choice. People can call me whatever they want, it doesn’t bother me.
That’s funny to hear about your film consumption – you’d think you’d have a kind of sixth sense by now of what films not to waste your time if, if you know you’re not going to review them for your channel.
If you go to my Letterboxd account, you’ll see I do log every movie that I see, so the answer is, well, no, I’m not being more careful. The movie theatre is my sanctuary, it’s my church. I might see a trailer and think, well, that’s not going to be for me, but I still like to be current. I want to see where the public’s taste is aligning with what the studios are making. And as a filmmaker, I need to know what is and what isn’t working in the marketplace.
How much has your perspective on the art and act of filmmaking changed since going behind the camera?
It’s impossible to immerse yourself in the world of film and not learn something. My film school was watching movies. But the process of marketing a film and doing a press tour and reading reviews of your movie, I don’t think any filmmaker decided to make movies for that part of it. But I will say that I’m having fun with all of it. I have dreamt of this my whole life, man.
You made Shelby Oaks using the funding platform Kickstarter, pledging a layer of transparency on the process that’s a bit unprecedented. How do you feel that process went?
I wanted to give people what I always wish I had when I was a young, aspirational filmmaker. Most of the things I would see before making this was a filmmaker saying, “Oh you know you have a phone in your pocket with a camera, so there’s no reason you can’t make a movie.” But that’s a vague thing that doesn’t tell me anything. I felt like everyone who was making a movie was keeping it in this secret magic box. So we had a documentarian follow me during the entire shoot, which we’d upload to Kickstarter while we were shooting the movie. I heard from so many people who said that’s the best film school they’d ever had. Just watching how an indie movie gets shot, week after week.
Do you see yourself devoting yourself more to filmmaking than reviewing? And would it still be in the same genre?
I’ve got six or seven scripts I’ve written, all in the genre space. But I do have a drama that’s based on my Jehovah’s Witness past – I’d describe it as a Spotlight for the Jehovah’s Witness community – and I need to make that movie. But I don’t think it’s the right second movie. I need to get my footing a bit, work with some different budget levels. Now. I have to take the next step.
Shelby Oaks opens in theatres Oct. 24.
This interview has been condensed and edited.