- Shelby Oaks follows a woman investigating her sister’s mysterious disappearance, uncovering eerie footage linked to a long-forgotten paranormal investigation group and a haunting that refuses to stay buried.
- Shelby Oaks began as a fan-funded Kickstarter project that raised more than one million dollars, setting major expectations among horror lovers.
- The film is playing exclusively in theaters, but given its distribution from Neon, will likely stream on Hulu before the end of the year.
A horror setup we know and love, Shelby Oaks brings together a long-abandoned town, a missing sister, and a YouTube ghost-hunting channel that uncovers more than it should. The story centers on Mia, played by Camille Sullivan, who is searching for her missing sister Riley. The two used to run a small paranormal-investigation group called the “Paranormal Paranoids,” which went viral years earlier for exploring haunted locations on camera. After one particularly disturbing case in a town called Shelby Oaks, Riley vanished without a trace.
Years later, new footage surfaces that appears to show Riley alive. Mia becomes convinced her sister is still out there, trapped somewhere between life and death. She returns to Shelby Oaks with a small crew, determined to uncover what really happened. As she retraces her sister’s steps, strange things start to happen — flickering lights, mysterious sounds, and figures that seem to appear just outside the frame.
Let’s talk about what happened during these 91 minutes we won’t get back.
Once Mia takes the investigation into her own hands, Shelby Oaks pivots from ghost story to full-blown descent into demonic obsession. She learns that Wilson Miles (the man who shot himself on her doorstep) had spent years in Darke County Prison in the same cell where Riley once filmed a paranormal encounter. From there, Mia’s search spirals into the supernatural: an abandoned prison, a hellhound attack, and a trail that leads her to a rotting cabin owned by Norma, who turns out to be Miles’s mother.
Inside, Mia discovers iconography revealing that the entity haunting Shelby Oaks is an incubus, a demon that feeds on desire and lineage. The clues click into place: Miles’s suicide (“She finally let me free”) was the incubus releasing him after years of possession and his rot-inducing curse explains why the entire town decayed after his imprisonment. This isn’t the same cabin where the Paranormal Paranoids died—it’s something older, deeper, and connected directly to the demon itself.
In the cellar beneath Norma’s home, Mia finds Riley imprisoned and clearly unwell. When she frees her, the sisters confront Norma as she performs one last ritual over a newborn. Norma sacrifices herself, and a transfixed Mia takes the baby home—believing she’s rescued something pure.
That’s when Shelby Oaks blurs the line between redemption and ruin. At home, we learn Mia and her partner Richard had long struggled with infertility; an unused crib in their house had become a quiet symbol of loss. Richard thinks Mia’s obsession is delusional and eventually pulls away. But Mia, desperate for connection, clings to the baby as her miracle.
The film’s final stretch returns to where it all began: the sisters’ shared fear of what lurked outside their childhood window. As kids, Riley suffered night terrors about a shadowy figure watching her—and the night Mia crawled into bed to comfort her, the demon finally appeared. That moment, it turns out, wasn’t about Riley at all. The incubus had been watching Mia the whole time.
When Riley realizes the truth and tries to kill the baby, the demon intervenes, killing her instead and claiming Mia as its vessel. In the end, the demon never wanted Riley—it wanted Mia. So after all of that, it’s just a sister story.
