Backtrack: Adrien Brody heads up this interesting Australian horror which sees his character confront the skeletons in his closet.
Backtrack
The Australian film community have been working hard in recent years to make a name for themselves within the horror genre. Films such as Housebound and The Babadook have showcased they are capable of bringing the scares and this Friday sees the a new contender enter the ring, Backtrack. Backtrack is a modern mystery with a sprinkling of ghostly happenings.
The film stars Adrien Brody as a psychologist whom, whilst dealing with his grief surrounding the death of his daughter, discovers that his patients aren’t all that they seem. Even more intriguing is the fact that they all appear to have a connection to a traumatic event during his childhood. The only way to get to the bottom of the unfolding events and move on is to go back to his childhood home and reconnect with his estranged father.
Backtrack has your typical murder mystery plot but has been given a supernatural twist. This twist makes a film that could have been rather dull and tedious instead interesting and enjoyable. It’s a story which gets progressively darker and more disturbing. That being said, those familiar with the likes of Midsomer Murders, Inspector Morse etc will more than likely peg the ending early on, but it doesn’t impact on the enjoyability of Backtrack.
Brody holds the film together well with one exception, his accent. Brody’s Australian accent seems to drift in and out, which given his character is supposed to be a native Australian, is distracting and disorientating. Outside of Bower the rest of the cast of characters are underused and under developed, a travesty when you factor in that the film also stars Sam Neil.
Sadly Backtrack won’t stay in the memory for long as The Babadook but it does highlight that the Australian filmmakers are doing all they can to reinvent and subvert the horror realm.
Backtrack review by Kat Hughes, January 2016.
Backtrack is released in UK cinemas from Friday 29th January, 2016.
