In a normal movie, if your cinematography, lighting, acting, editing, script, sound mix and everything are abysmal, you try to fix them. But in a low budget horror movie, you can claim that's part of the TERRIFYING HORROR. This was badly shot in kind of a faux-Blair Witch style, with ugly high contrast lighting, sub-high school drama acting, jumpy headache-enducing editing, awful dialogue (not even good in that verbose Lovecraft way) and...I don't particularly remember the sound, but I'm sure it was bad. If your movie's mise-en-scene is "shittiness", you're not scary. You're just shitty.
Every time I go to a screening of student films, I wonder about the people who's movies are incompetent even after years of schooling. "Do these people really think they can work in the industry?" I wonder.
Apparently, the answer is yes.
They grow up to be Barrett J. Leigh and Thom Maurer.