Sarah Durn, Chris Stuckmann and Camille Sullivan at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Neon's "Shelby Oaks" at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on September 29, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Stewart Cook/Neon/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text [This story contains spoilers for Shelby Oaks.] Chris Stuckmann has turned his lifelong dream into a reality. It was never about becoming the world's most successful movie critic on YouTube; it was about making a theatrically released motion picture. That ambition is now known as Shelby Oaks, which, after two weeks in the marketplace, is headed toward profitability with a $4 million-plus gross worldwide. In July of 2024, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the Ohio native just a few hours before the world premiere of his feature directorial debut at Fantasia in Montreal. If you want to learn all about his background as a prominent YouTuber, as well as the chain of events that led to a record-setting Kickstarter campaign and the backing of Mike Flanagan/Neon, then that interview now serves as part one of this two-part piece. Related Stories Movies 'Shelby Oaks' Review: Part Found-Footage Horror, Part Mockumentary, Entirely Clunky Music Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, Grateful Dead Singer, Dies at 78 The particulars of the film itself are the current focus, beginning with what happened after Fantasia's premiere. Neon would soon fund three days' worth of additional photography, essentially doubling the sum that Stuckmann and his producer Aaron B. Koontz had applied toward principal photography in 2022. Due to fees, backer rewards and various other expenses, the original production budget was well below the $1.4 million that accumulated on Kickstarter. The overall production spend, including pickups, is now just north of $1 million. "Neon went back to read my original script and said, 'Hey, there's a few things in here that we really like, and we're wondering why you didn't shoot them.' And I said, 'The truth is we ran out of money,'' Stuckmann tells THR. "So we got to do three pickup days. I got to do some of these key moments that were always in my head and that I had mourned the passing of." [Spoiler Warning.] For starters, he widened the scope of his ending despite having the same destination. After the Brennan sisters, Mia (Camille Sullivan) and Riley (Sarah Durn), reunite for the first time since Riley's disappearance 12 years earlier, they soon struggle over the fate of Riley's demonically possessed baby. Mia - who's blinded by the allure of a newborn that's long eluded her and her husband - doesn't heed Riley's warning about the nature of the child, and in the course of their melee, Riley accidentally crashes through the second-story window of their family home. In the original Fantasia cut, Riley died upon impact, signifying that the big bad incubus, Tarion, got his desired outcome, one where the infertile Mia raises the cursed baby as her own. But in the theatrical cut, Riley briefly survives the drop before being devoured by Tarion's paw soldiers, the Hellhounds. During additional photography, Stuckmann and co. brought in dogs from Siberia, Russia, and Sweden in order to sell Riley's brutal death as it was once scripted. "It was really amazing to be able to come back and have this body built [for Riley]. [The dogs] all had these very specific expertises for how they bite and how they chew and what they get excited about chewing," Stuckmann shares. "So it was really just trying to hammer home what we wanted it to be originally." The other key addition is a flashback to Young Mia and Young Riley in the same bedroom that would later lead to Riley's violent end. Young Mia, in an effort to comfort her troubled younger sister as she slept, witnessed Tarion in the window, further establishing that Tarion was playing the long game all along. He not only orchestrated Riley's abduction many years later for the sake of conceiving a child with his existing victim, Wilson Miles, but he also knew he would need Mia to raise the child, something Riley outright refused to do. So the new flashback is introduced earlier in the movie and recurs in the final scene to solidify Mia's role in Tarion's grand design. The exclamation point of the film is also brand new. It used to conclude on a wide shot of the Brennan house with a pack of Hellhounds surrounding it, driving home the point that Mia's residence is the new hub for Tarion and co., just as the house of Wilson's mother, Norma (Robin Bartlett), once was. But now the film ends on a closeup of a traumatized Mia being bonded to Tarion, indicating she'll have to serve him and the baby for an indefinite amount of time until the vicious cycle can be passed on to yet another family. "Riley is the surrogate in a way. Riley is the person that is u