DAYLIGHT starts off like many other found footage movies, with a person narrating after-the-fact on several deaths and disappearances that happened around a house; followed by the showing of footage found on location.
However, what starts off as a deceptively simple story about a high school girl for whom a team of three child protective services workers is investigating the possibility of child abuse sprawls out in multiple directions, so that by the time everything is said and done, the plot subsumes stories concerning each of the three members of the CPS team, involving three separate priests and three different girls, their families and one boy, all centered on demonic possession.
Apparently, the original cut was three hours long, and it does not surprise me at all. The released cut, about half as long, compresses all the different plotlines to such an extent that I dare anyone to make sense of the plot on first viewing.
The matter is not helped by the fact that in the second half the pace becomes noticeably more hectic and confusing due to intermixing of different footage and various distortion effects. It is done to such an extent that it makes me wonder whether the film-makers tried to confuse the audience on purpose.
Since this mitigated my enjoyment of the movie, I was getting ready to give the film a low rating, despite the decent production values and acting.
But then, during the last 15 minutes, the movie suddenly went into an unexpected high-paced quasi-surrealistic tour de force, which led me to revise my view positively.
The final 15-minute sequence does not really clear up matters and may even introduce new confusions, but when it is just taken in as a sort of rapid-fire "stream of consciousness" procession of events without worrying too much about what it all means, it actually becomes quite enjoyable. At any rate, it is not like the audience was not already told at the beginning what will happen to all these people.
So this is a found footage movie that I think can be quite polarizing. I ended up kind of liking it overall, but I can understand the view of those who hate it with a passion.
