I've got 99 problems and this movie is most of them.

Rating: 3/10 (11 March 2013)

Okay, so first impression: We got some family getting hanged in the first 6.5 seconds of the movie. If you've ever see a horror movie where people were hanged....or a western, then you look at these people doing the lazy air-moonwalk and think "Damn, they must have been the shittiest actors. Probably ever." Now, you're walking on down through this film, and its your standard Paranormal Activity/Found footage style movie where they have some kind of eerie noise which signals a jump-scare is imminent. (Or the sound goes dead altogether for a second) ...And that's where *all* the scares come from. It really pushes hard for a "Boogie-man's gonna get 'cha" aspect, but even by the end of the movie, it just isn't there. Unless of course you're scared by the prospect of a supernatural spirit killing you while you're drugged or half asleep with no idea whats going on. At which point you forget about that and realized you judged the actors from those 6.5 seconds a bit harshly, and really it was just a questionable plot device. The film keeps throwing these gruesome 8mm camera snuff films at you, presumably to put you in that "Good god, that could happen to me!" state of mind.
Anyway, let's say you can forgive it for that. Then you get punched in the face with the lack of subtlety. If you can't figure out at 16:39 what's going on, then maybe this movie is for you. They practically serve the answers up for you on a silver platter. If you don't have a clue by then, don't worry. They later throw Professor Expert at you who immediately knows exactly what's going on. You might never see him again after he provides 3-4 sentences of plot explanation. He might not contribute, but at least he has the decency to appear again.
The one shake-up from tradition here is that when everyone in the audience is tearing their hair out because the family is staying in a haunted house, they actually move. Unexpected. I assume this was plenty scary for the target audience of parents with children? In the end, I was more impressed that an ancient Babylonian demon-spirit learned how to use a camera than I was with the the actual film..