It's a very slow burn. If you're expecting a scary movie, don't even expect to see ANYTHING "demonic" related for over 35-40 minutes into the movie. Once you get to Amber/Sidney's house it really begins to pick up. I personally found all of the acting to be pretty good, and it was interesting enough to hold my interest until the crazy stuff began. Basically if you like found footage, it's watchable, if you're just looking for horror, stay away from this.
shareI liked it until the end. The tension built nicely, as there were signs from the beginning that something was not quite right with the events the CPS workers investigate. It was an unsettling movie that, until the very end, was disturbing and creepy.
The filmmakers used overlapping dialog a lot. I mean really a lot - almost all the time, in fact. A little bit of overlapping dialog is a good thing in a found footage film, since it enhances the viewer's sense of being part of the action that is the primary appeal of that genre. While I appreciate the sense of reality that the technique creates - after all, that's how people talk in real life - unfortunately, Daylight took it too far and ended up creating confusion and frustration in the viewer. In many scenes, it was impossible to tell what was going on because the actors were talking too fast over one another, while simultaneously another conversation that's also relevant to the story was taking place in the background. This got worse toward the end. (Even using CC did not help because the CC couldn't begin to keep up with the words being fired from the screen from multiple characters all at once and at high speed.)
Secondly, the ending was a mess. Perhaps if we had been able to understand what was going on after they went into the lake, it would have made more sense. But, because of the above problem and because the story did not follow any of the usual patterns we associate with demonic possession movies (not that that's a bad thing in and of itself), I doubt most viewers have any clear notion of what was happening except a series of seemingly unrelated and inexplicable scenelets. The best I can come up with is that they all ended up in some sort of hell. Why? Not explained, but apparently it has something to do with Fr. Vincent. Or else they were transported to a demonic dimension or parallel world. That would explain why no bodies were found in the lake.
Finally, what was up with the video of the birthday party? We kept seeing fragments of it as though there was supposed to be something significant happening, but I didn't see anything. Of course, since we were only shown microsecond snippets, that's not surprising.
Despite the above criticisms, I actually liked the movie a lot. I'm going to watch it again before the Amazon rental expires. Maybe the ending will make more sense the second time around.