Playback is a tale of the past coming back to haunt the present. Years ago on Oct 21st, 1994, Harlan Diehl (Luke Bonczyk) murdered his entire adoptive family. People want to forget things like that though, so Julian's (Johnny Pacar) mom (Dorien Davies) really doesn't want to talk about it. Nevertheless, Julian decides that he wants to do a re-creation of the event for his high school journalist class. With the help of his girlfriend, Riley (Ambyr Childers), his best friend, Nate (Jonathan Keltz), Nate's girlfriend, Brianna (Alessandra Torresani) and her sister, Deedee (Jennifer Missoni), he gets a pretty good bit of footage together, but they aren't happy with the result. Julian asks an old co-worker of his, Quinn (Toby Hemingway), if he can dig up any of the original footage from the TV station where he works. Quinn finds the footage and watches it out of curiosity. At the end of the footage, which shows Harlan was alive when he was put into the ambulance, Quinn collapses. Meanwhile, Riley and Julian decide to find the original house where the murders took place so that they can shoot "on location" for a more realistic film.

Riley and Julian find the house where it all happened including a baby's room, but the news reports never mentioned a baby. Julian's mom finds them there, though. She doesn't want them digging into the past and the Diehl family murders. Julian's co-worker tells him that Louie La Prince (Harlan's biological great great grandfather) was rumored to be the Devil, and that he could steal people's entire soul through his movies. Even worse, that he stole his own son's soul and replaced it with his own and that soul would be passed on through his bloodline, getting stronger with each passing. Since watching the footage, it's like Quinn has been possessed. He isn't acting like himself and even murders his boss. He still has Quinn's knowledge and memories, so he can continue to do things like sell footage of the high school girl's locker room (and anywhere else he can sneak in a camera to get naked footage of teenage girls) to sleazy Officer Lyons (Christian Slater), but he is now on some kind of mission. He goes to the Diehl house and claims that he is home. Things are going to get progressively worse and these kids had better figure out what is going on and how to stop it, if any of them are to survive.

There are a few additional features on the Blu-ray to add to your viewing pleasure. The behind the scenes featurette is about 10 minutes long and pretty interesting as well as HDNET: A Look at Playback, which will give you more movie info. There is also a photo album with over 70 stills from the movie. The fact that it is Blu-ray quality shows in the film. The visual effects are well done, as is the audio. The Surround Sound was so effective that one of my dogs wouldn't stop looking for the hidden dog in the room, until the dog barking stopped in the very beginning. Personally, I think that the first few minutes of the film actually show off both the quality and the sound the best. If the rest of the film had that much intensity, it would have been simply amazing. As it is though, I felt like the plotlines and characters just didn't mesh very well together. Officer Lyons, in particular, felt like he was added just to have Christian Slater in the movie. Playback is a decent movie, but it is just missing something that I can't quite put my finger on that would have made it a great movie.