It is the duty of the film to make you suspend your disbelief for long enough to convince you that the recordings are real. Even if you're aware of the fact that they're not, if the film is doing its job, it should be easy to get lost in it, as it were. The fact that you need to sit down and play a game where you tell yourself to pretend that they're real means that it's a bad film, imho.
Couldn't have said it better myself.