Don't Bother Spoiler for the gullible

Rating: 1/10 (22 January 2012)

This film is promoted as a cinema verite of a paranormal event. But at the end I will tell you why I gave it a 1 out of ten. Meanwhile, I want you to read it as I experienced it. In the opening it thanks the families of the two characters and the San Diego Police Department. I watched the trailer before I rented it on cable. There was no indication that it was anything but home footage of paranormal activity. There was nothing else on cable so I rented it. (There must be multiple edits in circulation because many of the goofs that are reported on IMDb were not in the film I watched). But, like the Blair Witch Project, I thought I would watch it to see what all the talk was about: how a low budget film could have grossed so much. I did notice as the film progressed and I was buying it, that there was one goof still in the film that was never explained or mentioned. In a house with a burglar alarm set, the female character leaves the house in the middle of the night without setting off the alarm. That was when I began to question the veracity. I admit it: I am gullible. At the end (which is a different end from what is described on IMDb) after the film stops rolling, there are no credits, but a copyright and the standard disclaimer that this film is completely fictitious and any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. It was then that I realized that I had been duped. I know, I should have known that it would have been on the news if it actually happened and not a film in a theater. But, it was only then I went to IMDb to confirm that this was not cinema verite of actual events. This is purely fictitious and the film was had a writer, director, hired actors, stage hands, and was deliberately sold to the public as fact. Most people would be on their way out of the theater when the fiction disclaimer was shown and who actually reads them as even docu-dramas have this disclaimer even though it is a representation of factual events. So, people saw it, believed it to be true, told their friends, and we lined the pockets of another group of people who promote a film as fact when it is fiction. I wish I could get my money back. But more than that, I believe that films like this should have at the beginning credits and a clear disclaimer that it is fiction. We pay to see big budget horror films knowing they are fiction. This group deliberately presented the film from beginning to the penultimate frame as fact. Gullible people like myself belief that they are seeing cinema verite when it is presented as such. It should be illegal to promote a fictional film as fact. Even though I rented it on cable, my money went to a group of people who presented fiction as fact until the final frame with the legal disclaimer. I was livid. In future, I will be going to IMDb to find out as much about a film before I even pay $4 to rent it. But that is not why I gave it the lowest rating. I gave it the lowest rating because despite all the hype, it is not scary or riveting or even entertaining. I kept waiting for something to happen that would scare me or have me on the edge of my seat. It never happened. I only put it on pause to stare with disbelief at the end of reel fiction disclaimer. That was the only thing thing about this film that I will remember. It was a hoax.