As I watched this, I realized that the found-footage genre is a serious problem. It's a powerful tool, and it can make some incredible productions. But it also lowered the bar for entry into film production. The format glosses over so many weak points. Bad sound? Bad characters? No plot? Not enough revealed? Poor film quality? Poor cinematography? All of it can be excused with this format.
There are some instances where I've been really impressed at how effective the format is. The Paranormal Activity movies have done an exceptional job of building a mythos, and overcoming the inherent barriers to found footage. I really loved some of the work in the first V/H/S movie as well. This movie just doesn't have enough of a story to warrant a feature-length found footage movie.
To begin with, there isn't a sense of dread to the story. It takes until the halfway point before anything creepy happens, and then it's a dog's off-screen death. This would be a reasonable start, but it should have happened about 15-20 minutes earlier.
There's a pretty decent location for this movie. The house is interesting, and the property around it seems like a great place for some creepy goings-on. Instead, we spend so much time wandering around the maze with a night vision lens on. The last act is pretty long, and we spend most of that time running around in the dark, with two payoffs. Then they get back to the house, and the story is able to finish up.
Which brings me to the problem with the ending. It's revealed that nothing supernatural has happened. And I'll spoil the ending - it turns out the mother is nuts, and she killed everyone. The mother is only shown probably two or three times during the movie. She never displays any strange behavior. The twist that she was crazy would be a very nice one, but it only works if there was an adequate setup for the payoff. Strangely, I think it would have been more effective if it turned out that the younger brother was crazy.
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