Very disappointing

Rating: 3/10 (13 June 2011)

Couldn't help feeling very let down & disappointed after seeing this.
It sets itself up OK and a few aspects of it work quite well, unfortunately it suffers from a couple of fundamental flaws, the main one being that it is a horror/scary film which isn't the slightest bit scary. I can be scared quite easily, even by the odd mainstream thriller, probably even a 15 certificate in the past.
Not finding it scary is one thing, but having watched this on DVD and not in the cinema, I struggled to see where the scary parts would even have been - those which caused cinema-goers to walk out.
The disappointment is exacerbated as there is the basis of a good film. the set-up & cinematography are good, the mood it sets works for much of the film. Broadly speaking the plot works but when you break it down by segments it is pitiful at times.
The first 10 mins, has the similarities of a porn film, with the dialogue & filming of the girl, the next 10 the start of a Derek Acora ghost watch show. You could accept a slow 20 mins if it was setting itself up for something better than you got.
Unfortunately it then takes a turn for the even worse, as their behaviour becomes completely irrational and both characters become increasingly frustrating and idiots at times - 80% of which is the boyfriend who ends as one of the daftest characters in a long time. It could've still worked without that.
The police, or somebody would've been called in with all that evidence at least 3 or 4 nights beforehand, someone else, a relative would've been consulted, brought in to stay or if they were remotely normal, to have taken them away and surely it was only a question of time before the bailiffs turned up to evict a couple from a mansion, one of which is a student and the others a day trader who struggled to amass an hours work in 6 weeks.
The final problem is that the film has a catch 22 issue throughout. Whiilst the laptop each night, works very well throughout and always remains plausible, the video camera never does. It is used for the most pointless of scenes, or dialogue with no relevance whatsover to the demons and despite the girls' protestations to turn it off, it is ignored by an increasingly puzzling and unrealistic boyfriend, but then had he have done, there wouldn't have been another hour of footage.