I don't watch a horror movie looking for perfection. I look for a decent story that isn't screwed up by the actors or production staff. Unfortunately, pretty much everything that could have been done wrong in this film was.
First, lets talk about the group of five documenting hauntings in the abandoned hotel. Only three of the five were actually doing so. The two remaining hangers-on were the stock obnoxious boyfriend and slutty girlfriend - both of whom were so obviously ill-matched with their partners that it trumped all suspension of disbelief. There was simply no way either of the documentarians would have been going out with either of their mates.
Second, lets talk about shooting day for night. This is when a film is shot in daylight but manipulated to make it appear that the scenes were shot at night. At the very darkest it appears that the events in this movie occurred at around dusk. During other interior shots throughout the film it was clearly daylight outside because - duh - you could see the daylight through the windows. I don't believe a single exterior shot was actually filmed at night, and sometimes within the same scene the lighting would change from more red to more blue. The characters also inexplicably kept returning to what seems to be the basement of the hotel, which not only seemed to be a bit more haunted than the rest of the place, but also generally had daylight streaming down into it.
Third, how about doing at least a LITTLE research for minor points? This Nevada hotel was, to paraphrase, "one of the grandest hotels between Chicago and San Francisco. Now it sits abandoned off I-95." Can anyone tell me what is wrong with that sentence? Exactly! I-95 runs north-south from Maine to Florida. Would it really have taken more than 20 seconds to find a genuine interstate or state highway along which to place this hotel? Fourth, the ending is never explained and the viewer is left not really knowing why it ended as it did. I know this is often a device used by inferior film-makers to deflect criticism by reflecting it back to how stupid the viewer must be to not understand the film. Viewers too often fall into this trap, and sometimes with good reason. In this case, however, the nonsensical ending is yet another symptom of a horrible movie - not the viewer's inability to follow a story.
Even when looking for a low-budget horror flick to pass an October evening, avoid this one.
