In ‘Shelby Oaks,’ all the clichés are sprayed with the subtlety of a T-shirt gun

“Shelby Oaks,” a new horror film from a new director, gives you a lot of time to consider what’s old about the genre. One tried-and-true element is someone on the verge of doing something they shouldn’t: open that door, stare at that window, approach that disturbing figure. Now, though, with regrettably tired retreads such as “Shelby Oaks,” the impulse isn’t to scream at the screen “Don’t do it!” so much as “Get on with it already.”

It can’t be denied, of course, how much filmmaker Chris Stuckmann loves horror movies, because this genre-stanning YouTuber has stuffed a lot of familiar trappings into his debut: found footage, missing people, ghost towns, childhood nightmares, adult visions, dangerous creatures, unholy symbols and the twist you’ll see coming if you’re not half-asleep. Not to imply there’s anything wrong with a full menu of ingredients. The horror greats always knew how to mix the schlocky and the soul-churning. Let’s just say Stuckmann is still in the training-wheels phase.

Did I mention there’s also the faux documentary, many a horror movie’s favorite exposition vehicle? That’s how “Shelby Oaks” begins, laying out in a montage of video, news reports and online posts the circumstances surrounding the strange disappearance of camera-friendly YouTube ghost hunter Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), who, with three other friends, made up a lively internet team known as the “Paranormal Paranoids.” Investigating the remote, derelict town of Shelby Oaks was Riley’s last known project. Even after her pals were found slaughtered in a cabin, Riley remains missing.

Her older sister, Mia (Camille Sullivan), first seen interviewed by an off-camera documentarian, is convinced that the sibling she always knew as a good soul is still out there — alone, afraid and not, as she’s been accused, biding her time for a splashy reemergence. So when a mysterious visitor (Charlie Talbert) shows up with a violent message and a camcorder tape containing clues to Riley’s last known moments, Mia is ready to play sleuth — alone, naturally. (Playing her husband, Brendan Sexton III’s only job seems to be expressions of concern.)

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“Shelby Oaks” then shifts from its mock-doc framing and becomes some standard issue fright-night fare, with Mia and her flashlight patiently inspecting an abandoned prison, some creepy woods and eventually an old, underlit house occupied by a suspiciously friendly, spinsterish woman (Robin Bartlett, a presence) who sports a chuckle that sounds created for an animatronic display.

Mia may be looking for Riley, but what we’re ultimately searching for is much more than “Shelby Oaks” has to offer, its cut-and-paste components never jelling into a clench-worthy, singular horror vision. Esteemed horror veteran Mike Flanagan is an executive producer and you can sense Stuckmann grabbing aimlessly in the last third for the kind of sickly visual elegance that is Flanagan’s deliberative style. But it only ever feels like homage, not anything organic — Stuckmann doesn’t have his mentor’s storytelling smarts, nor his flair for the underpinnings of normality that ground horror.

Instead, you’re stuck questioning why things happen the way they do, because it wasn’t thought through. The exasperatingly foreseeable ending has a “that’s all?” quality, because you know that in the hands of a Cronenberg or Carpenter — or even relative newbies Ari Aster or Zach Cregger — the situation would be smearing the inside of your brain for a week afterward. Then again, it would have been set up a lot better than merely as a horror wannabe’s tour of his favorite tropes.