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Playback (2012)
Magnolia Home Entertainment
Blu-ray Disc Released: 5/8/2012
All Ratings out of
Movie:
1/2
Video:
1/2
Audio:
Extras:
1/2
Review by Mike Long, Posted on 5/15/2012
Every year, heck, everyday we are more and more reliant on electronics and technology. You're probably reading this on your smartphone. However, movies which show the dangers of technology for years. Decades ago, someone came up with the idea of machines turning against or twisted people using electronics for nefarious purposes and we still encounter this subject matter in movies today. The film Playback continues this tradition while throwing in a nice amount of possession and the supernatural for good measure.
Playback opens in 1994, where we witness Harlan Diehl (Luke Bonczyk) butcher his entire family, save for a baby. The story then jumps ahead to the present, where Julian (Johnny Pacar) and his friends Riley (Ambyr Childers), Deedee (Jennifer Missoni), Nate (Jonathan Keltz), and Brianna (Alessandra Torresani) are making a movie about the Diehl murders. Julian borrowed the video equipment from Quinn (Toby Hemingway), who works at the local TV station. Julian asks Quinn to find some old news footage on the murders and when he does, Quinn decides to check them out. This is a mistake, as he's immediately possessed by Diehl. Back from the dead, Diehl decides to pick up where he left off, tirelessly murdering others while trying to eradicate his family. Julian learns about Diehl's past and a certain secret about his own past, and decides that he must stop this murderer before all of his friends are gone.
Playback is a movie which seems determined to please everyone in the horror crowd. It opens with a mass murder which features a somewhat shocking amount of blood and nudity given that the movie has just started. Is this going to be a serial killer movie? Then it jumps to a group of high school students (played by actors as old as 31!) who are making their own video about the murders. Oh wait, this is more like Scream. Quinn then becomes possessed by Diehl by watching his old videos. The movie is suddenly Child's Play and Shocker combined with a hint of The Exorcist thrown in as Quinn's skin changes as the possession goes on. So, the movie goes from gore to meta to supernatural all in the span of about 40 minutes.
Unfortunately, all of this jumping around probably won't be enough to hold your attention, as Playback never settles on any one topic long enough to do it correctly. The blame falls squarely on actor-turned-director Michael A. Nickles, as he also wrote the script. There's nothing wrong with trying to make a movie all that it can be, but he bites off way more than he can chew here and the result is a movie which is all over the place. The movie doesn't give us much character development and we're supposed to believe that this odd group of teens (?!) would band together to make a video. It's explained that Julian and Quinn once worked together at a video store, but they don't seem to really know each other and this certainly doesn't explain why Quinn would risk his job by letting Julian borrow video equipment from the TV station. Once Quinn is possessed, he gains the power of mind control and can apparently possess others, but this power is left very vague -- of course, he can use it in the middle of the movie, but not during the finale when it would make sense. The movie does offer a plot twist which comes courtesy of Halloween II, but it doesn't really add much to the story.
The only truly interesting thing about Playback is a subplot concerning Louis Le Prince, who some believe invented filmmaking before Edison. This was a real person (whom I'd never heard of) and his inclusion in the story and the fictionalized theory of how his legacy affects others is actually a clever idea. If Nickles had stuck with that instead of making an over-edited movie which is trying to look like a Saw movie, he may have been up to something. Instead, we are left with a film which goes down many paths and returns from none of them. And don't be fooled by Christian Slater's name on the box, as he only has a cameo in the film as a corrupt cop. I can only assume that he read the rest of the script and gave himself suspension pending further investigation.
Playback offers a ghost who isn't confused by modern technology on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Magnolia Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.78:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 27 Mbps. The image is sharp and clear, showing no defects from the source material. The picture does show some grain at time, but it's clearly intentional, as the movie is filled with many distorted video images. The colors look good and the image is never overly dark or bright. The level of detail is good, as textures on objects are evident. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 3.7 Mbps. The track's dynamic range is a bit off, as the sound effects are far louder than the dialogue. Outside of that, the track is very active and we are bombarded as constant stereo and surround effects. These are often accompanied by sharp thumps from the subwoofer.
The Playback Blu-ray Disc contains a few extras. "Behind the Scenes" (8 minutes) is made-up mostly of "fly on the wall" on-set footage, mixed in with some film clips, which allows us to see the cast and crew at work. We also get some comments from the cast and a look at how Quinn's makeup was done. "HDNet: A Look at Playback" (5 minutes) is a relatively brief, EPK-like piece which contains clips and comments from Writer/Director Nickles. The extras are rounded out by a PHOTO GALLERY and the TRAILER for the film.
Review Copyright 2012 by Mike Long