PLAYBACK (2012)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed by Michael A. Nickles
Written by Michael A. Nickles
Starring Christian Slater, Johnny Pacar, Ambyr Childers, Toby Hemingway, Jonathan Keltz, Alessandra Torresani, Jennifer Missoni
Find out more about this film here!

Years after the mass murder of a family by the son, we come to find out that the actions of the murderer might have supernatural origins when the handheld video of the murders is discovered by a teen working as a video editor. After viewing the video, the teen Nate (played by Toby Hemmingway) is possessed, for lack of a better term, by an unseen force and the killings begin anew.

PLAYBACK plays like an amalgamation of a lot of other films. The self-aware teen cast with advanced knowledge of horror films looks and acts like they stepped off the set of SCREAM. The plot borrows elements of THE RING with its possessed video tape, while the opening lifts from both HALLOWEEN with the POV shots and family killing mixed with the hand held found footage style which can be found in too many films to count these days. Sitting through this film, I lost count of plot points that were swiped from other, better films.

That said, there are quite a few nice and gruesome kills throughout and the cast is much better than what one usually gets with this type of film. Now only does Johnny Pacar fill the role of hero nicely, but main hottie Ambyr Childers (along with most of the other girls in this film) are nice to look at. Christian Slater makes an appearance as a perverted cop who pays Nate big money for his secret cam recording of the women’s locker room at school. You’ll also recognize Alessandra Torresani (the cutesy Cylon daughter from CAPRICA) as one of the soon-to-be-dead teenagers.

Though capably made and decently acted, I’m lukewarm on PLAYBACK. Director Michael A. Nickles weaves it all together in an entertaining way, and I’d be interested to see what else the filmmaker has up his sleeve given more original material to work with, but this time around PLAYBACK feels like a clip show of other popular horror films.

Check out the trailer here!!