Playback [DVD]

On the cover of this DVD it says: "Ring meets Halloween". I beg to differ. It's not exactly a "Film to Die For". The movie is "nice", a bit scary at times, but not disturbing or demented. Of cause there are some elements that might resemble Ring and yes there's also a guy running around with a knife trying to kill "virgins". But all this is a film on its own.
I generally like horror and especially enjoyed some of movies from After Dark Horrorfest. Like I said this film is not bad, considering that it's a low budget movie. You can see that filmmakers tried their best to make it a decent film. I understand it's not a masterpiece of horror, but it definitely has its moments, when things get kinda creepy.
I really liked the idea and the myth that was build around it. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Christian Slater starring in it as a real bad cop. Honestly I must say there was nothing that I didn't like, nothing bad. And it's most likely, because I wasn't expecting much from this film. The movie doesn't raise any questions and it's not giving any specific answers. Like why Satan needs to replace souls of normal people with his own "dark" one, where is god and so on. I personally don't want to spoil your movie experience, with explaining in depth what happened and analyzing everything. If you like low budget horror movies, than this is the movie for you.

If you read some of the reviews for Playback, you may notice it receives more than its fair share of negativity. In some ways it deserves it, in others it doesn't. A lot of the criticism comes from how it's been sold. If you read the blurb, you'll see it mentions an `ex cop [played by Christian Slater] investigating a mysterious killer.' This is simply not true. For a start, Christian Slater's part in this film is little more than an extended cameo and it seems to be a blatant attempt by the studio/promoters to do their best at cashing in on the one and only (semi) big name attached to the project.

The film is actually about a group of teenagers who are trying to make their own horror film when they stumble on a particularly nasty supernatural force that links back to their town's past. In many ways, Playback is little more than a (supernatural) slasher film that loosely borrows from superior works like The Ring. You may even forget that Christian Slater is in the film because his character has so little to do.

Playback is okay. If you can ignore its miss-selling and are just looking for a run-of-the-mill horror to fill an hour and a half, then this one will probably do. Yes, there are a fair few unexplained bits that may leave you with a question mark or two over your head, but, like I say, it's far from perfect, but it just about makes the grade.

*** This review contains some spoilers ***

On 21 October 1994, the deranged Harlan Diehl (Luke Bonczyk) kills his family in their farm and only a baby survives. In the present days, the teenager Julian Miller (Johnny Pacar) borrows a camera, tripod and other equipment from his friend Quinn (Toby Hemingway) that works in a TV studio to make an amateurish film about the infamous Harlan Diehl with his girlfriend and their classmates. Quinn then sells footage of a couple of his female classmates in the change room in the high school to the sick police officer Frank Lyons (Christian Slater). When Julian inadvertently unleashes evil through the playback of videotapes, Quinn is possessed by Harlan Diehl and begins a violent crime spree. Playback is a complete mess of a movie. The story is tedious and takes far too long to go anywhere. No wait forget that because the movie goes nowhere. So video cameras can capture your soul and then what? The actions of the possessed character don't make a lot of sense. What is his end game other than possessing the soul of the now grown up baby. And yeah that twist was not interesting or shocking at all. The motivation of the evil character also is confusing. He can put part of his soul into people to control them. The 1st time he does this it results in a random killing and the second time he uses it to move his plan further along. Why waste the 1st one? Then you have the cop character played by Slater. He is really creepy and does a good job in the role (the only one who could act in this film) but has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It feels like they wrote him a part so they could put his name on the DVD cover, what a complete and utter waste. Really I suppose that I should just not try and apply logic to the story or script. Playback was a truly awful horror film that I suggest you should avoid at all costs.