The father was a really weak part of the movie for me. Besides being a not-so-good actor, the character took the story into typical horror territory, where despite obviously freakish shit going on, one guy maintains a 'I don't want to hear this, there's a reasonable explanation here' stance, even though the obvious response should be "oh yeah, well let's go check the cameras and see what got on film."
I don't think the first one suffered that way. If I remember, after like every night you see them watching the footage the next day. It seemed like in the sequel, they never bothered looking at the footage unless they pretty much already knew something messed up had happened.