Haunted house or mental illness?

Rating: 4/10 (6 November 2019)

It's not that I don't feel for Katie (Katie Featherstone). She's been plagued by hallucinations since the age of 8. Her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) is sympathetic but clumsy, thinking his pricey new camera can capture her demons on film.
It's a pretty silly concept and this highly hyped film can be tedious as we sit through repeated filmings of the couple asleep in the blue-gray light of their room. Admittedly, we tense up a little when we start to hear eerie noises around 2 AM, observe the bedroom door moving, and watch a catatonic Katie hovering over Micah's side of the bed.
I'll also admit that apprehension mounts a little as Micah gets rough with the spectre, throwing the F word around and making taunts -- "Have something to say in English this time?" while Katie vows to contact a demonologist. "Tomorrow I'm making the call." Ooooh, the spirit will get angry at these things!
The last few minutes of the movie are indeed scary, as we observe Katie descend into madness and Micah meet an inexplicable end. (It's so easy to kill off characters; the writers' resorting to this is a very weak point in the plot.)
I like what I've seen of found-footage movies, particularly "Cannibal Holocaust" and "The Blair Witch Project." Despite referencing the latter, and paying homage to such horror epics as "The Haunting," this production is not in its predecessors' league.
I think this film is best viewed as the portrait of an unfortunate soul who is tortured by a psychosis that "doesn't care about alarms and locked doors." "You can't run from it," a psychic advises. "It wants Katie."
Katie never seeks help in a conventional way (i.e., by consulting a psychologist), and one does feel for her suffering. "I don't want to be here," she laments. "I feel it breathing on me." She can never escape herself and in the end that proves devastating. How sad to hear her words of surrender: "I don't want to leave. I think it better if we stay."