Project Almanac, 2015
Directed by Dean Israelite
Starring Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D’Elia, Sam Lerner, Allen Evangelista, Virginia Gardner and Amy Landecker
SYNOPSIS:
A found-footage teen-flick, whereby our college-applying scientists find a clock-rewinding contraption in the basement…
Creating a time travel movie that doesn’t have any leaky gaps in its plot is a very tricky thing to pull off. Similarly creating a found-footage movie that doesn’t feel contrived or forced is also very difficult to get right. Combine the two together and Dean Israelite really had a hard task on his hands to make this found footage time travel movie make sense while never feeling too gimmicky. And to his credit, he mostly succeeds. But some sloppy writing choices and half baked ideas really hold back Project Almanac from what could have been a great sci-fi movie.
Firstly, you need to have your time travel rules written down so that everything you do makes sense. You can either take The Terminator approach, where time is a circle and anything you do in the past doesn’t effect the future because you will have already done it (John Connor had to send Kyle Reese back to 1984 because without him impregnating his mother he wouldn’t exist), or you take the Back to the Future method where the simplest of acts like running down a pine tree can have consequences in the future. Project Almanac‘s problem is that it doesn’t know which sandpit to play in.
A brother and sister duo by the names of David and Christina discover a camera belonging to their dead father in their attic which has a video of David’s seventh birthday. While everything on the tape seems normal, David suddenly spots himself as a teenager in the background attending his own party. This prompts them and their friends to discover their father was working on a top secret experiment called Project Almanac (a reference to Back to the Future Part II) which would allow them to travel back through time. Seeing as they have video evidence of David in the past, they assume they’ve already built the machine and then play around with the space time continuum for their own ends.
In the early goings Project Almanac plays by The Terminator principle of a circle timeline, but then quickly changes its mind along the way in order to facilitate the story. They discover that their actions in the past are causing ripple effects in the future such as plane crashes, which moves the story into a Back to the Future motif, that then raises questions about the tape they discovered in the first place that are never answered. Furthermore, Project Almanac sets up the idea that David has already travelled back to his seventh birthday, suggesting that if they were to go back there again they would run into that timeline version of him. But in a scene that follows, the group repeat the same day over and over again à la Groundhog Day so that one of their party can pass a science test. But no where is it explained how they keep doing this without constantly running into each other.
It’s frustrating because it’s so lazy. First time screenwriters Andrew Stark and Jason Pagan clearly had several ideas which act as references to time travel movies of years gone by, but didn’t pick and choose the ones that work within the confines of the world they’ve created. So what you end up with is more questions than answers which is particularly frustrating because the questions have no answers.
The second issue with Project Almanac is that it’s a found footage movie that often doesn’t want to be one. This is a common problem within this subgenre as a variety of different contrivances are presented to explain why a camera is always on, but then never explains how its edited together and being presented in front of us. Much like Josh Trank’s Chronicle, Project Almanac often abandons the gimmick and shoots it like a regular movie, while still pretending its found footage. In one sequence, David is flirting with ‘hot girl from school’ Jessie during their trip to Lollapalooza which, in the movie’s world, is being filmed from afar by his sister Christina. However, not only are both kid’s audio as clear as day over the general buzz of a music festival, but no one ever questions why David’s sister is filming his every action – even in his most intimate moments. Had the movie adopted the same principles as The Atticus Institute whereby you use found footage when necessary and shoot the movie in a normal fashion for the rest of the runtime, Project Almanac wouldn’t feel so manipulated.
But even with all of its flaws, there’s so much fun to be found within Project Almanac that you can’t call the movie a failure. Stark, Pagan and Israelite clearly have a love for time travel movies as the film makes several nods and references to flicks like Time Cop and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and each of their travels through the space time continuum feels like a tribute to the movies that have come before it. The cast of characters are also wonderfully likeable which makes their adventure and learning all the more joyful with Sam Lerner having a blast in the comedy relief role, as is Allen Evangelista. The female roles are sadly underutilised, but Jonny Weston gives a marvellous showing as the young David and pulls off seventeen very well despite being the grand old age of twenty-seven. Ryan Guzman could have benefited from his good genes when he was trying to do the same thing in The Boy Next Door.
Incredibly flawed due to a script that wasn’t fully thought out (but took nine months to write apparently!) and hindered by a gimmick that should have been used in smaller doses, Project Almanac is not a brilliant piece of sci-fi, but a very fun one. If you can look past its story flaws and just enjoy these wacky teens going on a bizarre adventure, you’ll come out the other end with a smile on your face. It doesn’t reach the lofty heights of the movies it references like The Terminator, Back to the Future, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure or even The Butterfly Effect, but it’s not a terrible effort.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
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