I didn't love it, but the 2 main criticisms of the film are idiotic.

COMMON CRITICISM #1 - "There's no way Cheryl would become attached to her captor."
Or the "romantic subplot" as some tards have called it. Look people. Go to wikipedia. Type in Stockholm Syndrome. If you think this doesn't exist, you need to pick up a book. Get out of the basement. Take Psychology 101. Not only would this happen, I guarantee you it would happen more often than not. Eight years of mental and physical torture? People's minds reprogram themselves all the time as a mechanism for survival. Bad Guy becomes Good Guy. Pain becomes Pleasure. Right becomes Wrong.
COMMON CRITICISM #2 - "The Acting Sucks."
Of course some of the acting sucks. Look at how many speaking roles there are! I counted 61. Imagine being in Poughkeepsie, NY with no money to pay professional actors and needing to fill SIXTY-ONE roles. You think Paul Giamatti is gonna drive himself up from NYC and do a day or two on your homemade snuff film/mockumentary out of the goodness of his heart? Get a grip on reality. There were wooden and stiff people being interviewed. But go watch a real true crime documentary. Guess what? There are wooden and stiff REAL people being interviewed.
If you don't put this movie in its context when you criticize it, you look like an idiot who knows nothing about films or filmmaking. (and like I said, I think the film is very flawed. And if your complaint is just that it didn't scare you, then fine. That's entirely subjective and hardly worth arguing.)
But don't tell me you could've done so much better yourself, because if that's the case, just shut up and do it. Put a chunk of your salary (or I suspect in most of these cases, your allowance) aside for a year. Soon you'll have enough to make a movie just like this. Show us how it's done. Because there are scores of homemade horror films up on Youtube. And they don't hold a candle to this movie. And that's the apple-to-apple comparison that should be made here. It's a No Budget homemade film. You can't hold it up to SAW. You can't hold it up to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Don't be dumb.