I think my biggest issue with this movie is that it tries way too hard to be serious, but none of the acting is good enough to be taken even remotely seriously. If it had even taken a couple brief moments to make a light joke here and there, so we know not to take it so serious, it could've helped it a tad. The bad actors overacting resulted in a lot of unintentional comedy.
The fact we did not see the possessed girl before the possession, in an innocent state, also lessened the effect in my opinion. Not like I wanted this film to be any longer than it already was, but I felt like I kept getting introduced to more and more new characters that I just didn't care about or know enough about to care, when I didn't even know anything about the lead girl in the first place. That makes for a pretty big chore to sit through this one.
But I don't believe they were concerned much with character development anyway, they were much more concerned with the splatter. Which is totally fine! I love gore flicks. There are a few fine displays of effect work in this film. The finale was rather impressive in that aspect. But when there's nothing else going for it, and the film just isn't good enough to believable, I feel the impact of the gore is also lessened.
With some better actors, maybe this movie would have succeeded for me. But as is, it should've known to keep it's tongue firmly in cheek so the viewer could've had a more enjoyable time with it.
