Backtrack

Nothing is what it seems in writer/director Michael Petroni's dull and derivative plundering of The Sixth Sense, The Others and Don't Look Now. No spoiler worries, it's revealed very early on that all the patients on the couch of a bereaved Australian psychologist (Adrien Brody) are actually ghosts from his past, intent on leading him to uncover a dark traumatic secret from his childhood. If only the reveal was worth the build-up. A capable cast of Aussie genre stalwarts (Sam Neill, Bruce Spence) ensures the recycled material punches above its high-gloss weight and Petroni handles a few of the telegraphed jolts with a certain degree of flair. But this rectifying of old injustices, the disclosure of long-buried mysteries and a spectral threat that then gives way to a very real villain is so tired and over-familiar, even the basic supernatural ingredients fail to cohere in the engaging and spine-chilling way that they should.