Intcatinfo
A Masterpiece!
Plustown
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Edwin
The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
beorhouse
Consummate actor Adrien Brody treats us yet again to a brilliant performance as a troubled psychiatrist suffering from selective amnesia. Everything he plays in is 75% better because he's there--and that honor generally only goes to Johnny Depp and Anthony Hopkins. This ghost story has a few twists, and the CGI helps tell the story instead of overpowers it. The first part of the film is quite a bit better than the last 45 minutes, but I like ghost stories without additional detective work and sequences which include revenge--even if it is ghostly. To me, BACKTRACK Part 2 should be about the psychiatrist's father and how he plans to pay his victims back--or just explain it all to God--or maybe both. In this film I would have liked to see the old man break down and confess instead of getting chewed up by a passenger train. All in all, this one's worth your time if you like spooky stories. I could have done without the jump scares, though.
brunocappello
not because of Brody's performance (of course, he's always brilliant). Flashback-first unknown images overfilled the first fourthyfive or fifty minutes. And I think that remains deeper when you ended watching the film, deeper than the ending itself. I don't know if this people needed to extend the movie over 90 minutes (if you pay attention at the opening and final credits, you'll see that they're waaaay too slow -the opening music helps a lot). Brody, as told, is awesome and, as someone already said: he's maybe too much an actor for the character and made us feel he's kinda doing it with no effort. The other main carachters: even they seem to be very important and felt off the scene or they appear from nowhere and catch all the attention (i'm sorry for spoiling). Can't judge them. Writer/Director: I guess time was chasing you and you couldn't take a few more months to end it up over a 6/10
eddie_baggins
An Australian psychological thriller that harbors a potentially powerful narrative, The Rite and The Book Thief writer turned director Michael Petroni's film fails to capitalise on his stories potential as Backtrack squanders a capable cast in amongst some dire execution, tired storytelling tropes and an overall feel of mundanity that ruins any chance Backtrack had of finding an audience or fans.Hiring Oscar winner and one time blockbuster participant Adrien Brody and acquiring the services of the refreshed Sam Neill may've seemed like a nice stepping stone for Backtrack's audience acquisitions but not even the two seasoned performers can save this stinker from wallowing in its own self-made problems of ineptitude.The career of Adrien Brody needs particular attention paid to it after his largely lifeless and badly Australian accented turn as psychologist with a past and ghostly visions Peter Bower sees the star of King Kong and The Pianist continue on a career bender to the edges of obscurity that not even the shores of Australia can save.Since Brody's win at the Academy Awards way back in 2003, the actor has put his name to such projects as Giallo, High School, Third Person, Dragon Blade and American Heist and his presence in Backtrack ads absolutely zilch to proceedings as Petroni's film starts off uninvitingly and continues on its merry way with neither the scares, chills or emotional heft to make the mystery of Bower's past and his ghostly friends worthwhile and Petroni struggles to culminate proceedings in a satisfactory manner as things take a turn for the downright ludicrous as Bower's father William and Robin McLeavy's kindly police officer Barbara Henning become involved in the various uninteresting twists and turns.There's a decent film somewhere at the core of Backtrack but this is a highly lacklustre Australian offering that will be neither well received on home soil or abroad and in a local industry that is already facing an uphill battle to maintain a loyal local following, films like this certainly help the cause very little.1 plastic poncho out of 5
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.