Ignore the bad reviews AND the hype: see it for yourself - an effective film

Rating: 9/10 (1 November 2009)

The movie is a good scary film. It uses the 'less is more' philosophy very well. The characters seemed real, like they could be your own friends, or just someone you know from work. The atmosphere seemed real; the couple's home looks like the home of a friend of mine. Further, how the character's start off normal, and then gradually descend into their own personal, paranoid sort of madness. This really unnerves me. Madness itself is undesired enough. But to see normal people - someone you could easily know - gradually become more and more angry, or paranoid, or spooked, to the point where they're on the verge of madness creeps me out. For I can't help thinking I'd react the same. People who weren't scared are either lying or don't get scared by nearly anything.
There's also no good reason to think this movie isn't scary. The ending isn't bad or unnatural. It flows nicely from what came before. She lunges at the camera, because the camera is the symbol of the interloper. The demon despised the boyfriend's arrogance and insolence. And the demon despised the camera because it was the symbol of the boyfriend's attempts to infringe on the demon's privacy.
Further, some don't like the boring scenes. Well, if they don't like them, don't watch the film. It's not for them. The movie takes it for granted that the audience is going to be smart enough to know that the movie is designed not to look like it cared about how things were being filmed. For example, if you're making a home movie, and you accidentally leave the camera on a counter while the two characters are off screen talking or arguing, then this is a completely natural thing you'd expect from footage claiming to be taken not by professional movie makers, but normal everyday people who happened to own a camera. If you come to the movie knowing this, then you expect these so-called boring scenes. If they weren't there, we'd be suspicious of fraudulent editing. The fact that they are there makes the movie feel even more real. And this is the basic fact the movie deals with: this is real footage.
Furthermore, some people thought it was funny. Well, this is says more about their own psychological sensibilities than it does about the quality of the film itself. If you think the paranormal activity that lead up to the full possession of an innocent woman funny, then either you are psychologically demented or you really were scared and your laughing is a defense mechanism. If you want to be all macho and prove to the world that the movie was crap because of how macho you are, then you are going into the movie with the completely wrong frame of mind. If you heard a bunch of hype, then I'm sorry. But do not judge the movie based on the hype, period. This will ruin your skills as a good judge of the movie. Judge the movie on its own terms and in its own context.
Also, you can't fault the movie because you think the characters did something dumb. The movie is what it is. It's marketed as being live footage of real people being haunted by a demon. If the character did stupid things, then guess what? That's what the camera recorded them as doing. You can't fault the movie itself for the acts of the characters, especially in a film like this one. The proper conclusion to draw is that the character acted stupidly, not that the movie itself is bad.
As a side note, it seems like all the bad reviews of this movie are written by morons who can't even write a grammatically correct sentence. Yes, that's a clue.
Conclusion: Ignore the hype and the unrealistic denunciations of this film being the least scariest movie ever made. Both are extremes, and so both are critically unreliable. The former is made by those who want to be a part of something special; the latter is made by those who just want to feel macho. Ignore them both and see it for yourself. Suspend your imagination, put yourself in their shoes, and allow the crawling suspense of the film make you feel a little disturbed. If you don't feel it, it's not for you: you're in one of the categories I mentioned above.