These found footage, first person spookhouse movies generally work on me if they're done halfway well. I loved The Blair Witch Project and Grave Encounters really had me going (despite some overtly goofy CGI effects). The Crying Dead also had me most of the way there but then lost me when the spooks came out. IMO there's two big problems that deflate the scares. One is the ghosts. They just aren't that scary. Three little girls, in Halloween facepaint, double-exposed as they traipse about in the dark hallways. Kinda spooky but not very. Despite some early implications that these aren't normal kids they don't behave very strangely or look very menacing (nothing like the ghouls in the poster image). I really think they needed an additional layer of bizarre to them... a hint at something... other. The second problem, for me, was the editing... or pacing of the movie. The movie starts off with a scene that sets up the threat, but it's on the verge of laughable because it's just so overt so early on. There are also scenes from later in the movie that are repeated early on during the slow stuff... I think to assure impatient viewers that there is some action coming. This wouldn't bother me as much in a regular film but it doesn't fit the found footage conceit here... particularly since those scenes are duplicates of later footage. In a way the film plays its hand in these early scenes and the rest is just going through the motions. Sadly, the nature of the haunting just isn't very imaginative... nothing beyond ghostly little girls with 'powerz'. Once they show up it's just rinse and repeat... they don't get any weirder or scarier than when we first saw them, early on. They really needed something more.
Despite those two points I still kinda enjoyed the movie. It did have me on edge at times, just by the nature of how it was filmed... the suspense is good even if the payoff is lame. The actors did a great job with what little they were given... all my gripes are with the writing/editing.
One other thing I'll mention... the music in the closing credits is the same sort of generic heavy metal that a hundred other horror movies toss in. I think it would have left the audience with a bit more of a after-scare if something more creepy and subtle had been used... something that carried on the mood of the film rather than blaringly contradicting it.
Despite those two points I still kinda enjoyed the movie. It did have me on edge at times, just by the nature of how it was filmed... the suspense is good even if the payoff is lame. The actors did a great job with what little they were given... all my gripes are with the writing/editing.
One other thing I'll mention... the music in the closing credits is the same sort of generic heavy metal that a hundred other horror movies toss in. I think it would have left the audience with a bit more of a after-scare if something more creepy and subtle had been used... something that carried on the mood of the film rather than blaringly contradicting it.