Shelby Oaks (2024)

Shelby-Oaks-(2024)
Shelby Oaks (2024)

Shelby Oaks

Permit me to say this first there is no festival that I will more likely love than the Fantasia International Film Festival happening in Montreal. The event is long (at least two weeks), genre-specific (horror, sci-fi, animation and more) and as diverse as they come and it’s also extremely Canadian. So I was overjoyed to find out that in my first year as an assistant editor at RogerEbert.com, I wouldn’t only get to ransack Fantasia’s ever-generous screener library from home this year; I’d get to fly up to sunny Montreal, Quebec (yes, really sunny! In July!) and attend the fest myself.

This year running from July 18th through August 4th, Fantasia serves as a roundup of some of the most far-flung genre cinema of the past few years. Japanese thrillers? Korean thrillers? French Canadian indies? French indies? All those together in one movie? Future Shudder Originals by the bushel? Yes!

But beyond watching all these scrappy little movies be born into the world, what excited me most about attending Fantasia was forgive me for borrowing such an ugly American-ism soaking in a bit of its culture. Specifically crossing international lines into a country that feels not too dissimilar from my own but still has so many little nuances: all that tres continental casual outdoor smoking, all that French language dominance. This includes learning things like how even though you’re seeing movies at a beautiful IMAX theater on a hot day with sun outside, you’ll need to bring your own jacket inside because Canada runs their AC like they’re trying to store meat.

Or how certain audience members might meow before every movie because cats are involved, or cheer when an ancient commercial for Shin Ramen plays before one screening or another; or chuckle when they hear that an American film programmer recently described the crowds at a Quebecois horror festival as “very polite” the emphasis he put on the word “polite.”

But I’ve got work to do here, too. So, with that said I’m spending this week and a half in Montreal seeing as many movies as I can at Fantasia (and for several days afterward, when I’m back home). And before we get into all the scrappy little indies and international pictures that make up most of Fantasia’s schedule, let’s take a look at some of the bigger ticket items that filled its first few days.

The opening night selection at Fantasia was a deceptively sweet one and also a perfect fit for the festival’s pedigree Ant Timpson’s “Bookworm,” an unexpectedly tender and wry family adventure that shares some of its thematic DNA with Timpson’s previous picture, “Come to Daddy,” swaps out the blood for Taika Waititi esque whimsy. Like “Daddy,” it’s another fractured father child crisis narrative, but this time the roles are reversed a know it all 11 year old girl named Mildred (bright eyed newcomer Nell Fisher, “Evil Dead Rise”) leads her absent dad Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood, in his latest collaboration with Timpson), a failed magician who doesn’t even know he sired her into the woods to capture footage of a mythical black panther, they need the reward money to help Mildred’s mother, who’s fallen into a coma. He has no idea how to parent. Wood gets to trudge through mystical plains here much as he did decades ago in his “Lord of the Rings” days, except this is a smaller and more intimate story about deadbeat dads forced to grow up so they can keep pace with their kids. The feel of “Bookworm” is ’70s all over, from its hazy filmic look to the psychedelic folk tracks that seem to play in every other scene.

There’s more than a bit of “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (which starred Sam Neill) in its deadpan drollness, which works nicely for Wood and his signature cluelessness; he and Fisher make fantastic odd-couple foils, her every line throwing Strawn off balance. Then they face danger whether it be from mysterious backpacking couple David (Michael Smiley) and Sarah (Morgana O’Reilly), both acting suspiciously under Smiley’s very impressive facial hair, or from the elements themselves and it’s usually Strawn’s cowardice that gets them into the most trouble. As a showcase for these two actors, “Bookworm” is a fine if occasionally repetitive story of estranged family coming together for the first time in crisis.

It’s not perfect. The low budget shows its seams in some of the more ambitious VFX sequences, and the first act takes its sweet time establishing stakes for this adventure we’re about to go on (though it must be noted that the very first shot of their journey, which stretches the boxy 4:3 aspect ratio to a glorious scope complete with title drop, is inspired). And said quest does take a rather roundabout path, which can help with character-building but often results in momentum loss. Still, “Bookworm” finds Timpson stretching his legs and making another fatherhood movie in a far different key more “Goonies” than grindhouse. It’s an A for effort even if it doesn’t all come together.

One of the festival’s most awaited films is “Shelby Oaks,” helmed by YouTube film critic turned filmmaker Chris Stuckmann. Being a public figure with a large fanbase, it’s easy to let him off easy he seems like such a friendly, passionate guy in his videos, an ardent lover of horror who wanted to make his own entry into the genre so as to share that love. And now, thanks to his name recognition, a successful Kickstarter campaign and the recent backing of executive producer Mike Flanagan as well as NEON (fresh off its success with “Longlegs”), he has that opportunity to put more than a decade worth of film criticism knowledge to use. But what he shows us with “Shelby Oaks” is just how much ability he has when it comes to regurgitating the things that make up those movies not actually creating them himself.

Critics have frustratingly had their hands tied when it comes to talking about the movie itself they want to save all those “surprises” for general audiences so I can only really talk about that stretch of the work where one set of filmmaking choices applies before another does. What I can tell you is this: In its first few minutes, “Shelby Oaks” presents itself as something along the lines of a found footage documentary, investigating the early 2000s vanishing of one of the hosts of a then-popular YouTube ghost hunting show called “Paranormal Paranoids.” Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn) disappeared over ten years ago, and her sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) has been searching for her ever since. A mysterious tape eventually leads her closer than she’s ever been before but also makes her more desperate than ever to find out where she is.

Credit should be given to “Shelby” for managing to feel like a big budget horror movie; Andrew Scott Baird, the cinematographer, has an eye for both the grainy immediacy of YouTube and VHS footage and more contemporary styles of filmmaking that pop up throughout. It’s atmospheric enough, with Stuckmann pulling off the basic mechanics of a spooky-scary scene, whether it’s building slow tension or jumping out at you to yell ‘boo.’

The problem is that none of this cinematic grammar seems to go anywhere or cohere into anything satisfying as it goes along. The first half sets up a fascinating DIY investigative vibe it taps into the true-crime impulse to pore over footage, zooming in on new details or chasing down leads late at night against all advice. But when the clues start falling into place, the central mystery starts feeling too recognizable, it’s an uninspired mishmash of everything from “The Blair Witch Project” to “Rosemary’s Baby,” with even more obvious nods that eagle-eyed horror hounds will catch. Sullivan seems like a capable actress, but there’s not much for her to do here besides follow breadcrumbs and stare quivering off into middle distance. (There’s also an uncomfortable story thread that ties women’s worthiness to their fertility, which Stuckmann doesn’t complicate enough.)

The film reaches towards some kind of ‘elevated’ horror (inasmuch as those words mean anything), but doesn’t seem confident about aiming for anything other than aping what Stuckmann has seen work in other movies before. If anything, it feels like a filmmaker’s sizzle reel proof they can at least get through the job if story just goes through horror motions and I’m curious what lessons stuckman takes away from this one and whether he can parlay them into something more unique and coherent next time.

Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” has seen its fair share of film adaptations I’m partial to the 2000s Jim Caviezel/Guy Pearce one myself but Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière’s 2024 iteration is a massive, lavish and exceedingly French (in the best way) take on the material. Bursting to life as a kind of novelistic superhero movie, “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo” feels of a piece with Martin Bourboulon’s “Three Musketeers” duology from last year: baroque, expensive-looking and exceedingly streamlined.

Unlike the 2002 version, “Monte Cristo” luxuriates in its overgrown three hour runtime, which still manages to clip through the broad strokes of Dumas’ novel at an acceptable trot. You likely know the basic outline: steadfast sailor Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney, looking like a cross between Gael Garcia Bernal and Jake Gyllenhaal depending on the angle) is betrayed by his friend Fernand (Bastien Bouillon) and exiled to a deep dark hole in Marseilles’ most remote island prison. There he meets fellow prisoner Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), who helps him escape and points him towards a treasure map that will make him you guessed it. So armed with masks and a Machiavellian sense of trickery, he sets about insinuating himself into French high society with the express goal of ruining Fernand et alii who caused his wrongful imprisonment.

It is not an easy task to condense a 1200-page novel into three hours. But Delaporte and de La Patellière have succeeded in giving us a “Monte-Cristo” that is big, melodramatic and stuffed with the dusty, mysterious grandeur of those Hollywood epics we used to call golden age. The film follows through on its early promise of methodically exciting Dantès into the Count, going full Napoleonic “Dark Knight Rises” as it breaks him down in Château d’If’s cobwebbed bowels and builds him back up again.

Then he comes back to France rich. And this becomes another superhero movie, one where the hero’s main moves are guile and social engineering. It feels weirdly modern, among all the bright period detail (sumptuous costumes by Thierry Delettre) and sweeping cinematography (Nicolas Bolduc), that this guy should wear a series of eerily lifelike prosthetic masks for his disguises, including one of himself.

But around every turn of “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo,” there’s more than just another crisp swish of cloaks or flash of daggers. There’s talk about whether revenge can be anything but personal but what if you’ve made it your business? There’s even more about the virtue or otherwise of our heroes: how they fare when faced with having to choose between avenging themselves or saving their souls. And there are many satisfying ways in which all these pieces fit together without falling neatly into place.

Niney takes us from innocent young man to embittered puppeteer so slowly that neither we nor he can see the degradation happening until it’s done, his wide eyed romantic journal vlog through Paris is as close knit as any conspiracy theory, while yes maybe also being true. As each new bit clicks into one corner or another of the bigger puzzle, there comes a point where you realize that no matter how many lives he may touch for the better (or worse), no matter what secrets he may uncover or fortunes bequeath unto his fellow men, this quest is only ever going to end up destroying him.

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