Backtrack Reviews
Anything with Brody in it is worth watching. He’s truly one of the best.
By far not Adrien Brody's best movie, but an intriguing one-time watch with a predictable story line and ending. It's a thriller movie attempting to be horror, good for the ladies no gore.
A psychological horror that lacks build and is wrought with too much vagueness early on. Ghosts? Too fast, too slow, who knows? Either way bores, and then it ends in an unexpected and shocking way that makes everything else pointless.
Great ghost story don't understand why so many viewers didn't see it for that. Right up there with a Steven King horror thriller with a great ending.
This is a very good movie. A bit confusing at the beginning but if you stick with it it turns out to be a really great ghost story. Highly recommended
interesting movie with cool storyline
I might have seen Adrien Brody in another movie, possibly in a movie called Predators, but I was truly amazed with his acting ability here. His acting in this movie was certainly Marlon Brando-level acting in The Godfather. The movie itself was believable, despite having several plot holes, but Brody's acting was undoubtedly Oscar-worthy...
Adrian Brody has the perfect face for the protagonist of "Backtrack," a quiet and understated thriller in the vein of Shyamalan's "Sixth Sense." He plays Peter Bower, a psychiatrist in Australia who harbors ghosts from his past, along with the grief of losing his young daughter in a car accident. (I'll leave it to the experts to decide if his Aussie accent is credible). Peter never smiles, and his wife apparently suffers from chronic depression. He seeks advice from his friend and fellow shrink Duncan (Sam Neill), but their encounters are mostly fruitless. No spoiler here; you'll figure this out quite early in the film: All of Peter's patients are dead people who perished in a train crash in 1987. Peter and his friend Barry were witnesses, and it appears that the derailment was caused by the two of them stupidly leaving their bicycles on the tracks while spying on kids making out in the local lover's lane. Or maybe Peter is just imagining that. Conscience stricken and guilty, Peter returns to the town of his youth, where his father (George Shevtsov), a retired cop, is not particularly happy to see him. I'll end the synopsis here, but suffice it to say that things get progressively weirder. Brody plods through this film slump-shouldered and haunted. It's a good performance, and the atmosphere of the film is unrelentingly dismal. There are few well-placed jump scares as the ghosts from the train appear in front of Peter, but "Backtrack" plays more like a psychological puzzle than a horror movie. In the final act, we learn the solution to the film's mystery. It's surprising, with Freudian undertones, and the story transitions into crime / thriller territory. Observant viewers will notice the recurring "train" theme through this movie, and the climactic scene involving a train is superbly scary. "Backtrack's" slow, deliberate pacing may tax the patience of some viewers. But thanks to Brody's performance and Michael Petroni's deft direction, it kept me interested and confounded until its big reveal.
Supernatural mystery. Creepy kid. The beginning feels a bit surreal since chunks of it didn't make sense to me, but I suppose that's the point since it seems to be a reflection of the leads mind? The film's "atmosphere" is so quiet and moody that I didn't realize Adrien had an accent until 20 minutes in.
Adrian Brody deserves way better.
Brody is so intense, I love his performance. Even though the story is not as refined to the title, I really enjoyed it. As compared to movies of this genre, it's very good.
Sam Neil and Robin McLeavy are much too talented for this incredibly boring, laughably predictable, overwrought and cliche M Night Shyamalan wannabe. What were they thinking having Adrien Brody try that shitty Australian accent?