YouTuber film critic Chris Stuckmann has broken a Kickstarter record while funding his next project – a horror film called Shelby Oaks. The film has raised $650,000 in just three weeks, making it the “most funded” horror movie on the crowdfunding platform.
The movie will be in the found-footage subgenre, mixed with documentary, and concerns a group of missing paranormal investigators – the fictional mid-2000s U.S. investigative team called The Paranormal Paranoids. Stuckmann has two million YouTube subscribers, so finding 6,700 backers for his horror movie was never going to be that hard. As well as being a critic, he has made several short films. He signed with Gotham Group last year and apparently has multiple horror scripts in development.
Aaron B. Koontz of Austin-based Paper Street Pictures is producing the film and he said; “Every dollar we are raising is going onto the screen. This is an ambitious script and day by day our scope and opportunities to help realise Chris’ vision become more and more tangible all because of this campaign. We knew we had something special, but this outpouring of support has been absolutely humbling and so amazing to see.”
Koontz plans on involving the backers in the filmmaking process; “I’m really excited to pull the curtain back and show the ups and downs of how an indie film really gets made. This isn’t a raise funds and then we leave everyone behind to go make it. We want to create a community that can come along with us on the journey.”
The found footage subgenre of horror was mainly sparked by The Blair Witch Project in 1999 and escalated in the 2000s with Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield and REC. It’s still a popular type of horror today and has evolved with the times – for example, the 2020 Zoom movie Host, which was a response to lockdowns.
While we wait for more news on Shelby Oaks, check out our guide to the best horror movies of 2021.