First things first...

Rating: 7/10 (26 January 2020)

...I will concede that this movie was never going to actually "scare" me. While I love horror movies, I simply don't have the sort of mindset (or at least haven't had it since I was 12 and had trouble sleeping after seeing the first "Nightmare on Elm Street") to find myself viscerally frightened by a movie or TV show. I'm far more likely to be viscerally disgusted -- which is why I won't watch torture porn -- than frightened. So anything I have to say about this movie has to be understood in this context.
Having said that, the first time I watched this movie, 10 years ago, I really did start to get a sense of the tension and dread being built up. Some of the behavior of the characters made little sense (why not go to a public place for the night? or turn on actual lights rather than relying on the camera? or show the evidence to others? or even just decide that inexplicable and deeply unpleasant things happening demand to be taken seriously? looking at you, Micah) and that led to a sense of the director manipulating the audience by cutting off any avenue of escape by preventing the characters from finding relief, which in turn creates a sense of the inevitable. If they never leave their house/yard, at least not that the audience actually witnesses, well, yeah, it's going to feel suffocating and inexorable. That said, I do believe it works. Even if you have to suspend some belief and common sense, the movie accomplishes its goal, and does so with a nicely developing series of escalating phenomena. I can certainly see how people would find it disturbing, and could feel it myself (it wasn't going to scare me but that doesn't mean I'm insensitive to the effect.)
Unfortunately, the aspects I've mentioned also drag down the rating. It's just too manipulative, too much like cheating. I wanted to love it, because you always want to pull for the guy who makes a movie for $15K and hopes for the best. I liked it, even if I didn't really like the leads (especially Micah, who comes across as a stereotype to keep the movie going, which also feels like cheating, a little) and I do admire the director's combination of real creepiness while exercising a restraint that few horror directors seem to be capable of. My rewatch has left me with the same opinion as my original watch, so I feel comfortable in the consistency of my reactions to the movie as a whole/