With more stop-motion and practical effects and less “inexplicable” human behavior by the protagonists, this could have been a fun, sorta-retro horror movie. But the creature pops up for what amounts to one short scene, leaving the heavy lifting of the movie to what amounts to a cult of devil worshipping rednecks led by Kentucky’s version of Old and Young Biff from Back to the Future. They spend most of the movie threatening the protagonists (Kyle and his GF/friends), who finally sort-of fight back but in that kind of irritating “why the f* don’t you do something besides stand there and watch your friends get beaten” kind of way. Kyle has the opportunity to kill one or both of them but does what everyone who has ever seen a horror/crime movie knows not to do - he let’s them talk (until someone else in the cult can take the gun from his hand).

And I have to say, when you have situations where the natural instinct is to drop the camera and run, or when you have to cut away from the 1st person camera view to the usual 3rd person view, you need to just not try the “found footage”/view from the documentarian thing in the first place. It’s worse than using a more ordinary filming technique throughout the film instead - it leaves you wondering how the a-hole with the camera ever had a friend in his life, since the camera is clearly more important than, oh, helping his friends (or even his life in so many of these movies). :P