Backtrack

2015 "Nothing haunts like the past"
5.9| 1h30m| R| en
Details

Troubled psychotherapist Peter Bowers is suffering from nightmares and eerie visions. When he uncovers a horrifying secret that all of his patients share, he is put on a course that takes him back to the small hometown he fled years ago. There he confronts his demons and unravels a mystery 20 years in the making.

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Reviews

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.
agro_sydney At last an Australian Ghost story with a lot of atmosphere and an excellent cast. I must admit Academy Award winner Adrien Brody nailed his attempt at the Australian accent. Casting Adrien Brody, Sam Neill and Robin McLeavy should help international appeal and marketing.A ghost story about a grieving psychologist in Melbourne, Australia who is haunted by ghostly apparitions which make him search out his past in his rural home town.Excellent support cast includes Sam Neill, Robin McLeavy (The Loved Ones 2011), George Shevtsov, Jenni Baird, Chloe Bayliss, Bruce Spence (Mad Mad 2,3, Matrix Revolutions, Lord of the Rings) and Malcolm Kennard (Catching Milat). Great locations in Melbourne, Sydney, Carcoar and Oberon in country New South Wales.Robin McLeavy plays the role of a local rural cop with a sweet yet authoritative manner. Pure genius casting actor George Shevtsov as Adrien Brody's retired cop dad.Love the moody, atmospheric sets, photography and realistic special effects.I had never heard of the film and was lucky to pick it up by chance at my local public library. This is my first IMDb review in years. Sad to see the forums go.
doctor_ledo After a huge performance in the pianist and getting Oscar Brody struggled to capitalise on this success, appearing in mostly forgettable movies that failed to make use of his potential.Backtrack borrows ideas from a number of other films, including The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes, failing to improve on them in any measurable way.The story is very familiar and has many clichés. the two main characters on display share painfully contrived dialogue that prevents audiences from empathising with their grief.Luckily, though — at least for its own attorneys — "Backtrack" eventually moves beyond its shamelessly borrowed set-up to create a few chills of its own.Brody does his best even if it's awfully familiar. But the movie really doesn't stand up to further analysis. And unless Brody starts landing some better jobs soon, his career really doesn't stand a ghost of a chance.
david-rector-85092 This was clearly not my cuppa tea, but seen as part of AACTA member screenings for 2016, 'Backtrack' has some significant qualities, most of all the committed performance of Adrien Brody who not only keeps the viewer thoroughly hooked and tense, but delivers a surprisingly convincing Australian accent in this horror/mystery/supernatural melange of a movie. Casting George Shevtsov as the father to Brody's character was a stroke of genius as there are few actors on the planet with the sort of aquiline features that the Oscar winner has. And to find an actor in Australia who has the gravitas to match! This lends important authenticity to an otherwise pretty bizarre and twisted tale. There is something very nasty & violent at the core of 'Backtrack' despite Brody's sympathetic portrayal, I was mostly disinterested in the content; especially the zombie/ghost inclusions.Like I disclaimer-ed, this is not my sort of movie, but the soundscape is suitably moody and tense, and the camera work with masterful editing give this film its very self conscious and abrupt narrative. Having Sam Neill in the cast is always a bonus, but the film is all too often too moody and arty for its own good, with the viewer left scrambling to make head or tail of what has or hasn't happened to the protagonist. The score is a little too intrusive and signposting the text and the subtext, instead of allowing the ideas to present naturally. I can see 'Backtrack' finding an audience, as it is most definitely a genre piece and there is a hunger for this sort of entertainment. It is well made, and on the whole well acted. Robin McLeavy is especially convincing in a supporting role and has terrific presence on screen. I watched the movie as Adrien Brody is a great actor, but there's enough tragedy and dysfunction in the world for me to be too engaged or enraptured with 'Backtrack' and its psycho horror tale. At the end of the movie, it is for all intents and purposes, a pretty conventional mystery dressed up as much more. For the aficionados only@!
TxMike I came across this movie on Netflix streaming. The most glaring initial impression is that Brody speaks in such a whisper, especially during the first half of the movie, that you need to turn on the subtitles to grasp what he is saying. Set in Australia, the Psychologist is Adrien Brody as Peter Bower. He is despondent, his daughter had died recently in an accident on the street when Peter is distracted by something in a storefront window. The significance only comes to light at the end of the movie. This is a movie that requires viewing patience because things happen and we wonder if the story will go anywhere. But eventually it does and ends up being a worthwhile movie. SPOILERS: The whole story is set up some 20 years earlier when a train derailed near his small hometown. Peter and a friend had gone at night to spy at lover's lane, we see they lean their bikes against train tracks, and later a passenger train comes along, hits the bikes, and crashes to kill almost all on board. We think "Those bikes could not have caused that derailment" and we are correct, it was a faulty memory, suppressing what actually happened. To relieve his guilt Peter makes a report with the lady police chief. She is curious, as her mother had been one of the fatalities, looks up all old evidence and photos, corners Peter's dad, a cop back 20 years earlier, and all that leads to Peter's dad having been at lover's lane that night, he raped and murdered a girl Peter had been seeing as a ghost, Peter witnesses the struggling girl pull the track switch which actually caused the derailment. The dad then carried the dead girl and placed her among the dead in the train. That had been in Peter's subconscious all those years and seeing a similar toy track switching station in a store display window had distracted him when his daughter was killed. As the movie ends dad meets his own fate with a speeding train. A bit contrived, I must say.