Playback

Released by: Magnolia Films
Released on: May 8, 2012.
Director: Michael A. Nickles
Cast: Christian Slater, Mark Metcalf, Johnny Pacar, Luke Bonzcyk, Toby Hemingway
Year: 2012
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The Movie:

Michael A. Nickles; 2012 feature Playback starts off very strongly with an opening scene in which a disturbed young man named Harlan Diehl (Luke Bonczyk) wanders the family home and kills his parents and sister but not his sister's infant child. If that weren't odd enough, he did this with a camcorder in one of his hands and taped a lot of what happened that night. Skip a decade and a half into the future and a low budget would be horror movie director named Julian (Johnny Pacar) has decided that the Harlan Diehl murder would make a great feature film for his civics class and so he and a few friends, digital camcorders in hand, use one of the friends' homes as a movie set while her parents are out of town.

Julian was lucky enough to borrow the gear he needed from Quinn (Toby Hemingway), a slightly older kid who recently finished high school and who works in the archives department of a local TV station. You know where this is going, right? Julian asks Quinn to see if he can get him any footage from the actual murders for research purposes and when Quinn finds it, and subsequently watches it, he quickly becomes obsessed with the murders - and of course, all of this ties in ever so conveniently to the opening murder scene. As Quinn's obsession grows stronger he gets all gothed out and pale looking and he becomes increasingly more evil, almost as if what he saw in the footage has possessed him.

Once that admittedly impressive opening scene finishes up, be prepared for disappointment. Playback borrows from 'haunted video' movies like Ring and gives it an irritating teen horror makeover (though many of the cast members playing the high school students are quite obviously much older than the characters they've been cast to play) and crams in loads of clichés and predictable plot twists. The end result is a movie that's structurally a bit of a mess and which features some pretty serious logic gaps, but hey, it's got Christian Slater in it as a horny cop who likes to watch pretty girls undress more than he likes to save lives or solve murder cases. It's also got an amusing cameo from Mark Metcalf, the actor better known as the screaming angry dad from Twisted Sister's 'We're Not Gonna Take It' video. He doesn't yell or scream about electric twangers but it's still very obviously him.

The murder scenes, of which there are a few, can't elevate this one out of the bottom of the barrel. The film is fairly devoid of style and not particularly interesting to look at nor is it well acted or well written. You'll see the twist ending coming a mile away and the explanation for that twist is tenuous at best. Some moderate gore scenes offer brief reprise from the otherwise tedious storyline but it's not enough, this one sinks about ten minutes in and never manages to save itself. It's never suspenseful, let alone scary and it offers nothing of any lasting interest.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Playback was shot with what we can assume was likely a fairly modest budget using digital video cameras so don't expect any grain or print damage, the AVC encoded digital to digital 1.78.1 widescreen 1080p high definition transfer is very clean looking. Detail is good, colors look nice and black levels are fairly strong here. There aren't any serious issues with compression artifacts even if some minor crush is apparent in the darker spots, and contrast looks good. If this isn't going to sit on the upper echelon of Blu-ray transfers the movie still looks quite good in high definition.

The only audio option on the disc is an English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track but it gets the job done well enough. Gun shots have some good punch in the opening scene while dialogue remains clean, clear and easy to follow throughout the movie. The soundtrack, as bad as it is, sounds good here at least in terms of production quality - the disc is well mixed. Optional Spanish subtitles and English closed captioning is provided.

Extras aren't anything all that exciting but an eight minute behind the scenes featurette has some interesting on set footage and cast and crew input that is worth checking out if you dug the feature. If you didn't, it won't change your mind. Aside from that, we get a big still gallery, an HDNet promo spot for the movie, a trailer for the feature and trailers for a few unrelated Magnolia properties available now or coming soon to home video. All of the extras are in high definition.

The Final Word:

While Magnolia's presentation is a typically fine one, Playback starts off strong and then very quickly falls hard off the tracks and never regains its footing. Not even the guy from Animal House and the Twisted Sister videos can save this stinker and the end result is a pretty seriously terrible film.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!