So my girlfriend and I decided to give this one a shot because we are fans of found footage horror movies and really liked the Grave Encounters movies. We didn't expect too much from this movie, and that's about what we got. To sum up sxtape quickly, just imagine Grave Encounters...now remove all the parts where stuff actually happens, and you have this movie. Firstly, having only 2 characters for the bulk of the film really limits what can happen, especially when the story and dialog are as horrendous as they are here. The characters are not developed whatsoever and I feel like they act in completely random ways during the events of the movie and I don't get any kind of definition as to their character or personalities. The setting itself is great, but highly underutilized. Once again, we have yet another movie in an abandoned place where the director expects the location to carry the movie and make it "creepy" and "unsettling" by default without adding further elements to conjure those moods. So, we're left with a movie that mainly involves two people walking around in an asylum (that was performing lobotomies in 1982 apparently! to hell with sense. oh and the water and power still works. suuuure) and talking about random stuff (sometimes sex, sometimes "this is weird we should leave...but let's stay for some reason"). I didn't get the feeling that there was anything beyond a very loose story arc for this movie (there is going to be a boring intro, a "creepy" overly drawn out mid section, and a brief & very predictable climax). There was some stuff that happened, but there was no particular purpose behind any of it and none lead to any significant developments. One huge flaw I found with the movie is that any time a scene starts to pick up - you hear something in the distance, ominous music starts to play, some ghostly voices echo in the background, the cameraman starts to run...OK this is about to get good...and then, bizarrely, the camera shuts off and comes back on a second later in a different location where nothing is happening and nothing became of whatever situation was about to go down. This completely kills the mood. I have no idea why this "technique" was used over and over throughout the film but it made it a chore to sit through, since any time you think something is about to happen you are jarringly let down. I think there is also a plot about ghosts or something, but it is never fleshed out, nor does it have much bearing on anything that happens other than to provide a boo scare or two.
Ultimately, this is just a bland attempt to follow in the footsteps of movies like Grave Encounters. Not the worst thing ever, though not particularly worth watching unless you absolutely must see every found footage horror movie out there.
