The film stars Alessandra Torresani, Ambyr Childers, Johnny Pacar, Toby Hemingway, Jonathan Keltz, Jennifer Missoni, and Christian Slater.

Fifteen years later in Marshall, Michigan, an ambitious high school student Julian Miller (Johnny Pacar), is tasked with completing a film assignment on forgotten local stories for journalism class.

Choosing the Harlan Diehl case, though it goes against the wishes of his mother, Anne Miller (Lisa Jane Todd), he selects his girlfriend, Riley (Ambyr Childers), to be his project partner, and borrows camera equipment and archive footage from his reserved former coworker at a video store, Quinn (Toby Hemingway), who has since become a news station cataloger.

At work, Julian's disabled coworker, Wylie (Daryl Mitchell), tells him about an ancient legend involving Louis Le Prince, who is believed to have invented a way to steal souls, taking the soul of his son, Adolphe, and replacing it with his own demonic spirit simply by filming him in the motion picture, Roundhay Garden Scene.

Next, Quinn kidnaps Riley and kills Frank and DeeDee, while Julian asks a retired newscaster, Chris Safford (Mark Metcalf), about the Diehl case.

Quinn heads upstairs from the basement to fix the issue and buy Riley time to free herself from the restraints and rescue Julian from the other room before they flee.

Playback was declared the lowest-grossing film of the 2012 year by Movieline,[5] grossing just $264 from its one-theater release, $252 on its opening night and $12 more during its first week, after which it was pulled.