20140220: Horror Review--Playback

Playback

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2012, rated R, 98 minutes, horror, supernatural.
2. IMDB: 4.2/10.0 from 3,368 audience ratings.  Estimated budget: 7.5 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 0% on the meter; 80% liked it from 1,951 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.1/5.0 from 170,537 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Michael A. Nickles.
6. Starring:  Luke Bonczyk as Harlan Diehl, Jana Veldheer as Susie Diehl, Johnny Pacar as Julian Miller, Toby Hemingway as Quinn, Amber Childers as Riley, Christian Slater as Frank Lyons, Daryl Mitchell as Wylie.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film's first segment is time coded at 1994.  There's a few minutes of a bloody encounter where Harlan Diehl films a baby.  The filming seems to form some sort of connection.  The cops show up.  Harlan attempts to flee with the baby, but the cops prevent that.  The baby's mother Susie Diehl plunges a long knife in Harlan's back.  He throws her down, pulls out the knife, jumps toward her and plunges the knife into her chest.  The cops gift him with some bullets on the way down during the jump.


2. The film flashes forward to circa 2012.  A young pre-indie film director, Julian, is looking at replays of his current shooting with his co-stars.


3. The next segment shows some of the teens in journalism class, playing soccer, planning parties, and doing it all with a slacker attitude.  Julian meets Quinn, a man in his twenties who works at a television station (WPZM, Channel 13), to return recording equipment to Quinn.  Julian takes the opportunity to ask whether Quinn's station has any records about Harlan Diehl's bloody death in 1994.


4. What could possibly go wrong here?


5. Quinn soon finds the Diehl footage from 1994, and has some interaction with it.  That is, some supernatural (well, we'll see) exchange.  Quinn delivers some illegal recordings of a girls' locker room to Officer Frank Lyons in exchange for cash.  Later the same night he delivers footage about the Diehls to Julian at a teen party.  He uses the chance to plant a camera in a girl's bedroom.


6. When Quinn's boss reads him the riot act about the mess in the archives at the station, Quinn kills him.  The distinctive piece about the film is that whatever possessed Quinn does so via watching recorded footage.


7. What is this spirit after?  Is there some way to stop it?  Will there be a sequel after the next viewing of the strange tapes?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Muddled film with bad acting and more questions than answers.
2. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 Often dark to the point where much of the screen has no content.  Full daylight scenes are OK.


2. Sound: 6/10 Mostly OK, but sometimes the volcanic bursts of loud noise have to be dealt with if one lives anywhere near other people.


3. Acting: 3/10 Not so good.  Many of the actors look like tired people 25 to 30 years old, not teenagers.  Example: Pacar was 31 in 2012.  This is not Christian Slater's best work by any means.  Daryl Mitchell gives the only performance I liked, and the few moments of clarity about the supernatural underpinnings of the film.  The +3 is for Mr Mitchell, alone.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Has a beginning, middle and an end.  However, there is not much in terms of resolution, and the exposition of plot is weak.