Project Almanac

Starring: Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D'Elia, Sam Lerner, Allen Evangelista, Virginia Gardner, Amy Landecker, Gary Weeks
Directed by: Dean Israelite
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Science Fiction, Thriller
2015

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A group of friends build a time machine but their ventures into the past soon have unintended consequences.

Review:

Tim: Project Almanac felt a little bit like a movie out of time. Found footage films have seemingly had their day in the sun, but that day is now in the past. For that reason, this film never seemed especially appealing- almost as if the producers were clinging to what used to work, rather than blazing a new trail. That's not much of a vote of confidence in the quality of the film. However, this movie proved to be better than I expected. A weak ending hurts the film, so I can't quite call it a good movie. It does prove to have enjoyable aspects, though.

The basic idea is a fun one to explore- a group of teens find blueprints for a time machine and build it. There's so many different ways to mine this story. The film does portray a few of these in an interesting fashion. We see the high school kids travel back to pass a test they failed, to confront a bully, to party, etc. There's only so much you can show in one film, but the movie did a good job of giving us an idea of what time travel would be used for. The movie gets really interesting when the kids discover their time jumps have altered the timeline. This is one of the most fascinating aspects of the film, but it feels like it got shortchanged. I wanted to spend more time exploring this aspect of the time machine. It was so intriguing to see how their jumps impacted the world around them, and how one of them tries to reset the timeline but keeps making things worse. Again, this was hinted at, the toe was dipped into the water, but I wanted to be fully submerged in this. It was disappointing we didn't get more meat.

I do need to clarify that the science in this film is beyond absurd. The idea that a group of high school kids could build a time machine (even if they had the blueprints) makes no realistic sense at all. I still have no idea of how it was supposed to work. It just felt far too easy, even though we see them go through several different tests. The movie moves at a fairly quick pace, partially because to linger on any one thing for any substantial length of time would give the audience time to think about what we were seeing and the massive plot holes and logic gaps would become even more apparent. The only way to enjoy this movie is to not think about the sheer absurdity of the whole thing and just go with it. That's obviously a bit of a ding in the overall quality of the movie.

The cast was pretty good, comprised of either unknowns or "I know I've seen that guy somewhere before." No real stars emerged, but everyone gave solid performances. I thought they were each believable as high school students. The dialogue was especially believable. Sometimes dialogue in teen movies comes across as either far too mature or just completely ridiculous. The teens talking to each other felt authentic, which draws the audience into the story and characters. That was definitely a strength of the film.

I didn't have the highest hopes for Project Almanac, so it comes as a pleasant surprise that the movie wasn't all bad. There's too many logic flaws and plot holes for me to consider this a good movie, but it got significantly closer than I expected it would. While occasionally frustrating, I did derive some enjoyment from this film.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



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