Project Almanac (2015) Review!!

Synopsis – A group of teens discover secret plans of a time machine, and construct one. However, things start to get out of control.

My Take – People say time-travel films tend to be overused and become more convoluted in terms of story and pacing. Well in my opinion, they will always be fascinating! The whole idea of changing your destiny and the possible ripple effects of doing so just blows my mind. Hollywood seems to understand all that pretty well, because they’ve given us all sorts of different time travel movies to enjoy over the years. We’ve had comedies (Hot Tub Time Machine, Bill and Ted movies & Back to the Future trilogy), action films (Looper & the Terminator series), adventure movies (The Time Machine & the previous Planet of the Apes series), romances (About Time & 13 Going on 30), mainly sci-fi (most of the “Star Trek” films) and movies that mainly explore that ripple effect I mentioned (Source Code & The Butterfly Effect series). And then there’s this film, which brings together a mix of all these films & does it! Well mostly! & Yes! its found footage style this time, so if you are sick of them you might not enjoy it very much. Also if you’re already not into time travel or science in general you might leave the theater with a bad taste in your mouth. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Despite the almost original premise, I can shake the feeling of similarities with Project X and Chronicle mixed together.

The story follows David Raskin (Jonny Weston), who is no ordinary high school student. David Raskin (Jonny Weston) is no ordinary high school student. He’s smart enough to get into MIT with a partial scholarship and invent a drone that he can control with sensors on his hands. He has friends like Quinn Goldberg (Sam Lerner) and Adam Le (Allen Evangelista), who are smart enough to help him with his projects, and a slightly younger sister named Christina (Virginia Gardner) who videos all of it. When this group discovers a strange image on an old video tape, they get together and make history. The gang sees an image of teenage David in a mirror on a video tape of his 7th birthday party! His dad died in a car wreck a short time after shooting that video, but he left behind something that may help the teens unravel the mystery. David’s dad was a brilliant inventor and apparently, at the time of his death, was working on a temporal displacement device – a time machine! David and his friends use a partially-built prototype and blue prints they find in David’s basement to actually build the thing. After some trial and error, they successfully send a toy car back in time one minute and soon decide to use the machine on themselves. What do they do with the ability to move back and forth through time? They address typical concerns of young adults. One of them cheats on a class presentation, another gets revenge on a school bully, they all cheat to win the lottery (and have a blast spending their winnings) and they party – going back in time three weeks to check out Lollapalooza. David eventually wants to go back ten years to save his dad’s life, but first he wants to win the affections of his long-time crush, Jessie (Sofia Black-D’Elia) who has stumbled onto his little project and joins the crew. So, everyone is having a good time and changes the past to make their futures better. What could go wrong? Well, plenty! Since our lives develop from a series of both big and small decisions, as well as chance occurrences, and all of our lives are so interconnected, changing even the smallest details of the past has ripple effects that no one can imagine at the time. And then there’s the problem of going back in time and encountering your earlier self, a circumstance that, in this movie’s story, endangers your very existence. Time travel is always a tricky subject for a filmmaker to tackle. It’s been done countless times, with countless interpretations, and most attempts struggle to show us anything we haven’t seen before. But every once in awhile, someone comes along with an idea that breathes new life into the genre, and aside from a few stumbles in the third act, Project Almanac fits nicely into that category.

The experimentation process quickly becomes the highlight of Project Almanac, as David and his friends repeatedly test the device on various objects. The visuals here are tremendous fun, and the sheer, unadulterated joy the kids display when they realize what they’ve accomplished is infectious. They behave exactly the way you would expect teenagers with a time machine would behave: they go back in time to ace tests, stand up to bullying classmates, attend Lollapalooza, and in David’s case, win the affections of longtime crush Jessie Pierce. The performances of the young leads – Jonny Weston, Allen Evangelista, Sam Lerner, Virginia Gardner & Sofia Black-D’Elia are likeable. Unfortunately, the film runs into trouble around the beginning of the third act, when a seemingly innocuous deed turns out to have severe ramifications for the rest of the world. There’s no clear explanation why things have become so sour, when previous trips into the past didn’t result in disaster, and the film quickly descends into Butterfly Effect territory as each attempt to correct these mistakes results in further calamity. The ending also provides far more questions than answers, which is particularly disappointing when the first two-thirds of the film is so well-done. Unfortunately these issues keep the film from being a truly great film. Nevertheless ‘Project Almanac’, is still a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable entry into the genre. Though not as innovative as it seemed from the trailers, it sure is a fascinating watch!