The wait is over! October 24th brought the release of the highly anticipated psychological horror film, Shelby Oaks, and the answer is a resounding “Yes”—you absolutely need to see this movie. Shelby Oaks is a tense film that will keep you guessing right up to its terrifying final moments.

Shelby Oaks grips you from the start, chronicling a desperate search that morphs into a dangerous obsession. When the police dismiss her sister’s disappearance, Mia, played with determined resolve by Camille Sullivan, embarks on a solo mission to find her missing sister, Riley. A mysterious tape leads Mia to crucial new clues, pushing her deeper into an investigation of her own. She must ultimately confront a horrifying possibility: that something chillingly supernatural is at play.

The emotional weight of the film rests squarely on its two leads, and they carry it magnificently. Camille Sullivan delivers an intense, compelling performance as Mia, exuding a steely confidence and unshakable resolve that grounds the desperate search.

Equally fantastic is Sarah Durn, who plays Riley, the missing sister. Durn powerfully conveys trauma, fear, and deep-seated horror, giving the viewer a visceral connection to the character. Both actresses perform amazingly well, making their characters feel honest and deeply sympathetic. Their passionate intensity drives the entire narrative.

Shelby Oaks marks the feature directorial debut of Chris Stuckmann, and we applaud his accomplishment. Stuckmann crafts a film defined by intense tension, a uniquely fascinating story, and multiple twists you won’t see coming. The pacing is a prime example of great timing, carefully unfolding the story to maximize the impact of every revelation.

The film’s atmosphere is palpable. The cinematography beautifully captures a sense of darkness and decay, often showing scenes choked by mold, rot, and general ‘ick.’ While the majority of the special effects look incredibly well done, a few minor CGI elements involving dogs, unfortunately, stood out as slightly disappointing. However, the rest of the film’s visual design is fantastic, contributing heavily to its unsettling tone.

Shelby Oaks keeps the audience on the edge of their seats from beginning to end. It’s a terrifying, thought-provoking film. It lingers long after the credits roll, forcing you to think about the unsettling reality of families searching for lost loved ones and those who have been forgotten.

I highly recommend seeing Shelby Oaks; luckily, you can watch it now on the big screen. Be sure to watch our interview with star Sarah Durn (Riley), who gives us insight into the film and her role.

Movie Name : Bison

Release Date : Oct 24, 2025
123telugu.com Rating : 2.75/5
Starring : Dhruv Vikram, Anupama Parameswaran, Rajisha Vijayan, Pasupathy
Ameer
Director : Mari Selvaraj
Producers : Sameer Nair, Deepak Seigal, Pa. Ranjith, Aditi Anand
Music Director : Nivas K. Prasanna
Cinematographer : Ezhil Arasu K.
Editor :  Sakthi Thiru

Related Links : Trailer

Dhruv Vikram’s Bison Kaalamaadan (simply Bison) released in Tamil during Diwali, and its Telugu version hit the screens today, a week later. Directed by Mari Selvaraj, the film blends sports and social commentary and check out the review to know how it is.

Story:

Set in the 1990s, Bison follows Kittayya (Dhruv Vikram), a student who dreams of excelling in kabaddi. His father Velusamy (Pasupathy) disapproves, fearing for his son’s future. Their village is divided by caste, and Kittayya’s family belongs to a marginalised community that has endured oppression for generations. Despite resistance, he pursues kabaddi but faces harsh challenges at every step. Whether he achieves his dream and breaks these barriers forms the crux of the story.

Plus Points:

Mari Selvaraj once again explores oppression and social inequality, this time with kabaddi as the backdrop. He narrates it effectively, depicting inequality from local playgrounds to the national stage.

Dhruv Vikram puts his blood and sweat into the role. His physical transformation and emotional depth stand out, marking him as a promising talent.

Pasupathy is equally impressive, portraying a father torn between fear and affection. The bond between him and Dhruv forms the film’s emotional core.

Among others, Lal, Ameer, and Rajisha Vijayan perform well. Anupama Parameswaran, however, appears for less than 15 minutes and has little scope to perform.

Minus Points:

Bison draws inspiration from the life of Arjuna Award–winning kabaddi player Manathi Ganesan, balancing realism and emotion. While the discrimination is portrayed effectively, many scenes feel overstretched.

The emotional impact of Mari Selvaraj’s earlier works, such as Karnan and Pariyerum Perumal, is missing in Bison. Its length, repetitive sequences, and predictable narrative weaken the film’s overall grip.

The sports drama angle feels underused, with kabaddi serving more as a metaphor for social inequality than as a dramatic core.

In the Telugu dubbed version, poor localisation hurts the experience. Tamil signboards, newspapers, and tattoos remain untranslated, leaving viewers puzzled. It’s a clear case of negligence. The raw violence might also alienate family audiences.

Technical Aspects:

As a writer and director, Mari Selvaraj delivers a decent outing but not one matching the power of his earlier films. Bison struggles with uneven pacing and repetition. Ezhil Arasu K’s cinematography beautifully captures the rural backdrop and kabaddi action.

Nivas K. Prasanna’s music is decent but occasionally mismatched and loud. Sakthi Thiru’s editing could have been sharper, as trimming repetitive portions would have made it tighter. Production values are fine overall.

Verdict:

On the whole, Bison Kaalamaadan is a sports drama that addresses oppression and inequality. It works to an extent, largely due to Dhruv Vikram’s dedication and Pasupathy’s heartfelt performance. However, Mari Selvaraj’s narration lacks the sharpness and emotional impact of his earlier works. The prolonged runtime, predictable writing, and uneven emotional flow make Bison a below average flick. The film may not appeal to everyone, especially given its raw tone, but if you’re curious, watch it with modest expectations.

123telugu.com Rating: 2.75/5

Reviewed by 123telugu Team 

By Michael Marano

There’s a profound catharsis in watching Bugonia, one that echoes the catharsis articulated by those who attended the ‘No Kings’ protests on the 18th.

Bugonia, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Screening in cinemas around New England

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia is a remake of the 2003 South Korean movie Save the Green Planet!, which, for the sake of journalistic integrity, I gotta admit I haven’t seen. So, while I can’t talk about the connections of Bugonia to Green Planet!, I can comment on its connections to the whole subgenre of “Women Held Captive by Nut Jobs” movies.

And to the captivity we’re all enduring, right now.

Bugonia concerns two dumbfuck cousins (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis), who’ve had whatever scant IQ points they had at birth lobotomized out of them by QAnon-type online conspiracies. The oddly loveable and shaggy nitwits kidnap a high-powered pharmaceutical company CEO (Emma Stone), convinced she’s an alien using the levers of capitalism to destroy the planet. The pair demand an audience with Stone’s Andromedan superiors to negotiate for the survival of Homo Sapiens.

The vibe here, especially in the context of the cousins’ ever-nuttier conspiracy theories and the gender issues present, echoes William Wyler’s 1965 adaptation of John Fowles’ The Collector. A vibe maybe amplified by the recent deaths of the two stars of The Collector,  Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar? The Collector, which nabbed the premise of Beauty and the Beast, added the motif of the captor being crazy, making the beautiful woman prisoner not just a captive held in her kidnapper’s physical space, but his broken mental reality as well. Think of the physical and mental imprisonments of Split, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Boxing Helena, Room, the made-for-tv classics, Sweet Hostage and Bad Ronald, and the gender-swapped Misery.

There’s another dimension to this the post-Collector riff on the Beauty and the Beast captivity motif…  the site of captivity becomes a microcosm of larger, current societal issues. The mental illness of the captor echoes the mental illness of the culture. Where does the insanity of the captor end, and the insanity of society at large begin?

And here’s where Bugonia gets really interesting. Our whole culture enables and encourages billionaire plutocrats to kill the planet. When it comes to the delusions of Plemons and Delbis in Bugonia, does it matter whether or not Musk, Peter Theil, and company are hostile aliens — if what they’re doing to our species and the Earth is exactly what hostile aliens would do? Ever see the Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” in which aliens pave the way for their invasion by fomenting paranoia and distrust among Earth communities? How’s that different from what mutant, slug-boy dodgeball victim Mark Zuckerberg does with 3 billion Facebook users a month? Stone’s character allegedly approves the use of unauthorized and untested methods and procedures on unsuspecting subjects and consumers. How’s that different from what Elizabeth Holmes did to trusting schmucks via her scumbag Theranos grifts?

By making the alleged crimes of Stone’s CEO plausible, Bugonia dodges the issue that hampered Evan Peters’ tech bro villain in Tron: Ares and the last two movie iterations of Lex Luthor. No supervillain tech bro can compete with the insanity and malignancy of the real things. Stone plays a person of real villainy… not someone trying to get their hands on a hunk of kryptonite.

So, if society nurtures these corporate aliens (and it doesn’t matter a whit that they’re not extraterrestrial aliens) to spread destruction that would be the envy of H.G. Wells’s Martians, who’s to say these dim bulb cousins are nuts? Yeah, they’re acting crazy. But the world is crazy, so maybe their responses aren’t? The actions of oligarchs and corporate assholes are making their lives unlivable. And desperate times do call for desperate measures.

This ambiguity creates a kind of Stockholm Syndrome among the kidnapping cousins and the abductee and the audience. For most of its runtime, Bugonia is a work of theater. The story is mostly contained in a couple of rooms. Outside that theatrical space, real-life tech bros are making our lives just as unlivable as are the lives of those kidnapping cousins. If Bugonia is a play, then current events lend it a Brechtian Alienation Effect. The fourth wall is broken and on some level, the audience of Bugonia is made to think as they watch the film, to consider the insane ideas and issues being raised — and to weigh whether or not they really are crazy.

Everyone’s a hostage in Bugonia… the dum-dum cousins, Stone’s pharmaceutical CEO, and the audience. It’s an Absurdist movie, and the absurdity it envisions isn’t the goofy absurdity of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. It’s the sadistic predicament of millions of people whose lives have been imperiled (in some cases ended) by a self-proclaimed DOGE master, a transphobic, apartheid, sci-fi obsessed nepo baby with a breeding kink who wants to die on Mars, whose obscene wealth is based on slave labor imposed in a jade mine owned by his incest-obsessed daddy.

All these weighty and thought-provoking factors feed into the utterly twisted black humor that makes Bugonia such a delightfully warped night at the movies. There’s not a lot of hyperbole in Bugonia (for the most part). Stone hilariously fakes empathy for her employees while telling them they can leave work at 5:30 while at the same time telling them they really shouldn’t rings painfully true for anybody who’s had to deal with a shitty job and a sociopathic boss (which is everyone).  There’s a profound catharsis in watching Bugonia, one that echoes the catharsis articulated by those who attended the ‘No Kings’ protests on the 18th. In part, the attendees responded to not feeling alone in their horror and dismay at what Trump is doing. I got the vibe that the people at the screening of Bugonia I attended felt the same way watching the twistedness of the movie reflect the twistedness of the world outside the movie theater.

The sharing of that kind of catharsis is a very human empathy, of a type that the CEO (and/or alien?) that Stone plays is incapable. Rush out and see Bugonia and share that empathy, before the tech bros and oligarchs make you pay a subscription fee for the oxygen you’ll burn nervously laughing at the cruel inanity it depicts, and that we are all living in.

Novelist, editor, writing coach and personal trainer Mike Marano has a new story called “Land of the Glass Pinecones” in the GenX-themed anthology 120 Murders: Dark Fiction Inspired by the Alternative Era.