2012 Review #23: Playback

Playback

Rated R

1 Hour 38 Minutes

Starring

Johnny Pacar

Toby Hemingway

Ambyr Childers

Jennifer Missoni

Jonathan Keltz

Alessandra Torresani

Christian Slater

Story

A cop investigates the case of a missing local teen, though he discovers a dark secret that has been unleashed in his town, and an evil spirit that will stop at nothing to find its heir.

Rotten Tomatoes Score

NA

My Grade

F

*Will contain plot spoilers*
Playback is probably one of the stupidest horror movies I've seen in a long time. Not counting straight to DVD ones which are born bad. But I mean this movie is painfully awful. Here's the biggest thing that was just stupid: the description of the movie says it's about a cop who investigates the disappearance of a local teen and discovers a deep dark secret that will destroy the town. This cop they refer to is played by Christian Slater. There is literally one scene in the movie where he "investigates" this missing teen (an even that randomly happens about 30 minutes into the movie). He barely does any investigating. All he does is talks to a teen girl but it's more about him being creepy towards her.

You see, his only real role in the movie is to get spy cam footage of teen girls undressing in locker rooms from one of the main teens in the movie who works at the local news station. Slater is in maybe 3 or 4 scenes in the movie and has no importance whatsoever in the movie. Maybe there was another take of the movie that had him more prominent in the story and being an actual cop, but the director probably thought it was to good. He didn't even need to be a cop...his police work was pointless. He was just a creepy old perv who dies by getting his head blown off and his death was even insignificant. Point being, don't label this movie as something that it isn't.

The main focus on the movie is the group of teens who try to recreate a town tragedy where a man killed his whole family and the only survivor was a little baby. This psycho was apparently possessed by some kind of demon who is able to travel through video camera and video playbacks. Well it transfers itself into one teen and he goes on a killing rampage. The movie is just silly. It's pointless. It offers nothing new to the horror genre in fact it puts a major ding in the genre. Maybe I'm on a horror movie high after seeing the brilliant "Cabin in the Woods", I don't know. But Playback was utter shit. Everything about it sucked. The "teens" who were probably in their late 20's were terrible, and the police captain/mom of our main hero was even worse. It wasn't scary. It wasn't thrilling.

Call me an asshole, call me a movie snob. Call me whatever you want...but it won't change the fact that Playback is one of the stupidest, and down right worst horror movies in recent memory. Just...horrible.