A family hold a birthday party for their son at their new house, and he uses the present of a camera to document the ensuing strange events. are they tied to a local legend?This has caught a lot of flack on IMDb, but I reckon it deserves a higher rating than 3.6. The pool party scene has annoyed some, but I thought it was fine, although the shaky cam was too much - if girls helicoptering their bikini tops is not for you, then stay away. If shaky cam grinds your gears, stick it out because it gradually settles down, and the last half hour (apart from the final scene) is on static surveillance cams.The problem is they threw the kitchen sink at it, so it's full of action and sound effects and lots of characters, instead of the eerie build up of little things exploding in a terrifying climax that we're used to from the early Paranormal Activity movies. And packing in so much action means the implausibility of people not running for their lives comes way before the audience feels escape is futile. Also there's deep sloppiness in the story's internal time line.There are a couple of scenes inserted to show off grandstanding effects (second forest death and exorcism), which carries on from the desire to capture the male teen audience in the pool party scene. Cut them out and you probably have an acceptable run time of 85 mins. Also, a useful scene is ruined by the hokey trick of tying strings to the four corners of a sheet to make it elevate.Couple of good jump scares, but some of the stuff to camera is too literal for this genre - suggestion is much more effective while building to the climax. And the ghostly whispering took me back to '70s haunted house productions.The acting is fine, apart from the sister. Too many characters early on, although they do get thinned out. And the discipline of the first person POV is lost in the final scene.Overall - tries too hard, takes on too much, misunderstands its audience. It may be a case of the technical guys setting up the visuals before really thinking about their story. Seen a couple of those recently.

I was really incredibly disappointed! Mix the "Kid records his whole day on camera" point of view of "Cloverfield" with "surveillance camera" view of "Paranormal Activity", steal the better scenes from "The Exorcist", strip away all the suspense & thrill and everything else that was good in those movies, add some poor acting and voilà: you have 90 minutes of wasted lifetime. There are 3-4 "startle&scare" moments but basically they rely on loudness and are predictable. Other than in Cloverfield, you don't build up any kind of relationship with the characters and couldn't care less about them. I honestly have no explanation why I watched this piece to it's end. More than once I just wanted to hit that eject button and fling that disc against the wall.I even rented this as 3D blue-ray. Yes it is 3D but has no single effect that would justify the inconvenience of wearing 3D glasses. You say "but 3D glasses aren't THAT inconvenient!?" You're right, they aren't - but that's how lame the 3D effects of this movie are. I honestly feel ripped off by this movie! And I'm not talking about the money! Keep the money! Just give me back my wasted lifetime!

(all spoilers here) The acting in the movie was amateur, the police were using the wrong call signs for the letters of the license plates plus they ran like they were scared. Real police would not run from a crime scene. The witch was to life like and the camera filming was overly done to look like it was a typical amateur person with a camera. The light in the living room after the mother turned it off was to easy to predict that it would turn back on. the electrician getting electrocuted while wearing insulated gloves was just wrong. The produce rand director were so into making a scary ghost story they forgot to see obvious problems.

I'm sorry, this movie looked promising but it was ruined right from the beginning. The movie clearly tells you it takes place in January in Tennessee. Then, within the first minute of the movie it shows people having a pool party. I know that TN is in the south, I live there, but oh my god, really? This made the movie completely unbelievable to me. There is also the problem of when characters start dying off. It seems as if the characters in the movie only selectively care about a death when it moves the story forward. The one blaring example I can think of is the opening scene where the boy and girl are found mutilated and then flashes to six hours earlier (to the aforementioned pool party). Eventually the boy and girl leave the party, but are never mentioned again. If you are up for a movie to make fun of with your friends, by all means, watch it, but I don't think anyone could take this seriously.