While you pretty much figure out what's going on half way through the movie, you don't really see the extent of it all until the end. Angela's life is just sad. She seems to have good things: A good husband and a good daughter. She seems to be a great caretaker as she's taking care of two handicap children. She's also a very talented artist. She just has so much missing and it seemed that a lot of it had to do with Megan who has pretty much disappeared from her life. When you see how far she has gone to make this entire second life for herself you can't help but feel sorry for her.

The saddest part, IMO, is that Angela could have been completely honest with Nev from the start. She could have said it was her drawings and she could have just been herself. It's just sad that she feels that she needs to be someone completely different.

I thought the filmmakers handled it well. I would have run far away as soon as I saw what was going on. Obviously they had their movie in mind and I'm also sure that as soon as they saw how much Angela had made up they saw a potential goldmine. But I do like how they tried to show the good in Angela instead of making her seem like a sideshow freak.

The movie also wasn't without it's funny moments. The reveal that Megan was sending him songs that were previously recorded and the dirty texts that Megan sends Nev are pretty funny moments. Although the latter is kind of creepy when you realize it was Angela the entire time.

Documentary, everything was setup

My guess is that Angela and her family are not actors at all, and the filmmakers crafted/embellished the story after the fact. That doesn't mean it's not a documentary, though. The studio won't call it a documentary, but rather a "reality thriller" but I think that's to get more asses in the seats. Documentaries don't sell tickets like fictional movies do.

what apparently turns out to be an internet scam by this Angela lady.

That doesn't work because at a certain point Angela admits to everything she made up. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they went back after the big reveal and filmed some more stuff to plug into the early part of the film to make the twist more dramatic though.

Yes there is a moment when Nev wants to bail, but his bother talks him out of it. I'm sure off camera at some point they realized that this could be their big break and Nev, who agreed to it all before, can't pussy out when they got so close.

Also there is a scene AFTER they meet Angela where Henry (one of the filmmakers) wants to bail, but it's actually Nev that insists they should keep pushing on. Once they made the trek to Michigan it was mostly Nev insisting that they keep rolling.

I think once they all realized that there wasn't any malicious intent on Angela's part, they became more comfortable with the idea of keeping the movie going.

Angelea was surprisingly sympathetic, who wouldn't want to escape from her reality

Some of the controversy from what I've read is they the material fell in their lap, but they were a bit more aware that they were being duped earlier and kind of milked the material from there, in the end exploiting Angela and her sad existence. What do you think about that?

So basically a sad women pretends to be someone else/several people on the internet? At least it didn't turn out to be a guy.

I wonder how they managed to keep the footage of a federal crime taking place, in the film. Stealing mail is a federal offense.