Playback Review

Playback Review

 

Year: 2012

Stars: Christian Slater, Ambyr Childers and Toby Hemingway

Directed: Michael A. Nickles

Running Time:  98mins approx.

 

With a tiny budget of only 7.5 million that’s half the budget of screams 15million 16 years ago, this film which I can only really compare to Ringu or The Ring and that’s just lightly is a little bit of a mess. No means a bad film, just some unfortunate things that make it just a standard film using an idea that’s not been used often.

That is the cursed video tape angle, something I’m surprised not many other film makers have tried to cash in on. With that it makes this film pretty genuine, just too bad the other generic stuff places it in teen slasher flick territory.
Comparisons to The Ring? Well this entity or demon doesn’t manifest itself it takes over a person and turns them into a killing machine to achieve its ends.
Now with that budget they do manage to get some pretty decent twenty something teen actors, a few good effects and even Christian Slater!

Oh sorry did I make that out to be too much of a big deal? I apologise, poor Mr Slater how you have fallen.

I say decent acting because well it’s good for the budget they had, you get a lot of films with small budgets that get in any old person they think can to do a part, which if they’d looked a bit harder you’d find some pretty decent people who will work for peanuts like this film maker has (Christian Slater!). Which I can only give praise for.

So the film’s stars, I may have mentioned Christian Slater? So yeah he’s in here as a cop, perverted odd cop, brilliant part Christian! The rest of the cast is made up of reasonably unknowns soon to be re-used in TV series’ or other straight to video b-movies!

The film starts off with a little confusing for some, *real footage* bit of some naked chick (nakedness I’ll get to this later) getting the snot beaten out of her screaming about not hurting her baby, this is the *plot* of the film pretty much so I won’t say much as not to spoil it if you decide to give it a go.

Suffice to say we’re shown around with some of that terrible camera fuzziness I hated in asylum tapes, though slightly less in here. To some gruesome sights as we travel with the woman beater. Anyway this guy tries to put some weird soul into the baby when the cops show up and blah happens. This family is called the Diehl’s and this murder spree rocks the town.

Switch to some teens making a slasher flick based on what just happened! I think you can see where this film is going already no? Well I’ll carry on regardless.

So they’ve loaned the filming gear off some older kid (Quinn) a few of the other teens find a little creepy. Which I find justified as later when their giving the equipment back, he pulls up in a battered van, then proceeds to take a long deep inhale of some substance in a bag.
Off his tits he collects the gear and we learn he works for a news station the kid, Julian who is making the film asks if Quinn will search the archives for any info that might help him complete the film a bit better.

Quinn isn’t as big a deal at the news station as Julian believes he gets told off for loaning video equipment without permission when he gets it back, giving a suitable middle finger.

So after a few short scenes we see Quinn looking in on the girls changing room, yes there’s that nakedness again, that wouldn’t be an extra selling point to anyone there of course.
He gets a text message from Julian asking if he’s found any info huffing, as I’m sure anyone would he goes into the archives and starts scouting hey presto he finds some stuff on the murders that happened in the late 1990’s.

Which is when this should have been released and made it feels aged somehow like the teen slasher flacks of then scream etc., I know earlier I compared to ring but like I said it’s the ONLY comparison you can draw to this because of the influence of a haunted tape.

Anyway Quinn finds a tape a little later of the raw footage of the house which was being filmed just after the beginning of the film. Some weird shit happens as they bring a body out on a gurney, some fuzzy flicking of images etc.

The entity in the tape wants to find a host of the family to enter. Quinn re-watches and gets possessed by the entity in the film and passes out for a bit. We later see him pulling up to Christian Slater’s cop character Frank, who he gives a pen drive with video of the girl’s locker room on. Naughty little pervert cop!

The typical teen stuff happens in this film the party (not authorised by parents of course) Quinn comes seeming to be slowly getting taken over, and places a hidden camera in the girl’s room.

This video entity is know or at least something is known to the folks of the town a buried secret that come back to bite them.
Anyway Quinn gets increasingly taken over much to others misfortune as they start to end up dead now.
Enough film talk now we’re onto the meat and veg of the film after skirting the gravy the kills are fun not to imaginative and they have a pretty good effects due to some very decent cutting work you don’t quite catch a lot of it to scrutinise it.
Again brilliant work in conjunction to the modestly low budget, possibly due to teen naiveté throughout the film they don’t seem to notice Quinn becoming paler and even more weirder.
Quinn passes the curse to Brianna through a hidden camera he can also seem to control these possessed people like drones. Riley also gets kidnapped by Quinn around this time.

So the curse is confirmed a little a later as being very old as some footage shows a very old black and white film that where apparently everyone died on it after filming. That’s as much as I’ll spoil for you so I’ll just skip to my round up now as this review has been quite a long one!

Suffice to the possessed people go on killing rampages culminating in Christian Slater meeting an end at the hands of his fetish. Poor guy doesn’t even get a massive part in a low budget film like this!

Seems Julian is the baby from the beginning yes, didn’t see that one coming did we the old cliché of oh my god I’m making a movie that just so happens to be based on events that actually happened to me and I didn’t know!

Quinn finds out and kidnaps him where he takes him to the old Diehl house to transfer the curse right to him; Quinn is not looking good by this stage either a bit ill to say the least. So the curse needs to be passed on through family members to be able to survive.
Riley is able to escape then free Julian, why do these bad guys keep people around like that? You know she’s going to get free after some plot point takes you away from what you were doing for a few minutes.

So they run with Quinn in chase, Julian’s (now we know) foster mother also turns up, who was one of the cops on the scene of the original murders. She unfortunately gets blown away, drawing Julian out of hiding. Well that’d draw pretty much anyone who doesn’t really hate their parents out wouldn’t? I know clichéd but there it is.

Quinn and Julian exchange some fisticuffs with the occasional helping hand of Riley, unfortunately to no avail as he seeming is unstoppable and feels no pain duh!
Quinn almost succeeds in putting the evil in Julian twice more until a surprisingly un-blow away foster mum comes back. I won’t spoil it but I’ll just say the ending is your typical ending to these types of films.

Overall not a hugely bad film, just a bit out of its timeline for my liking which isn’t a bad thing really it just might not have any appeal to people who will watch this and go I know how this ends 15 minutes in like I did. Now 16 years ago when I was a spritely 14 year old first watching scream and I was wowed by it I may well have loved this as a follow up horror movie for another night as it stands now for my veteran mind I’ll give it a reasonably strong 3 stars and say stick it for your kids (teens at least please) for a sleep over or something they’ll enjoy it.

If you’re looking to pass 1hr 40mins yourself bung on you won’t be to disappointed. Peace out The Horror Nation fans!