Project Almanac (2015)

**This post contains spoilers**

The Story- David Raskin (Jonny Weston) finds plans for an unfinished time machine developed by his deceased father, Ben (Gary Weeks) in the basement of his house. David forms a team with his best friends Adam (Allen Evangelista) and Quinn (Sam Lerner) to help him finish building the time machine, while his sister Christina (Virginia Gardner) records everything. And in a strange twist of fate, David’s dream girl, Jessie (Sofia Black- D’Elia) joins the group.

Eventually, the completion of the time machine is a success, but one careless mistake sets off a series of catastrophic events.

My Thoughts- David using the Terminator movies as an example to explain time travel? Brief footage from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure? Yep. It’s definitely a time travel film, but the found-footage POV brings a refreshing perspective to Project Almanac.

There’s a strong attempt at a good sense of realism for how they approached time travel. David warns everyone about the serious physical risks of using the machine, and I’m glad they didn’t go too over the top with trying to make the time machine itself some fancy looking high tech machine. David and Ben’s time machine looks homemade. They needed to use Jessie’s Prius battery for more power, and the group shopping for parts at an Ace Hardware was a nice touch.

Project Almanac feels more unique because of the found-footage POV, but it’s also a double-edged sword here. There’s way too much of the voyeurism stuff throughout the movie. Too many scenes with the camera sitting still recording conversations, using the camcorder for hidden camera moments that different characters aren’t supposed to see, and everything during the Lollapalooza stage of the movie feels like a big vlog from  a social media influencer. Voyeurism routinely kills any kind of momentum they’re trying to build, and you’ll have to wait until the tail end of the movie for a consistent pace.

It’s only a matter of time before the usual time travel movie tropes kick in. The group uses the time machine to win the lottery, Christina wants revenge on a bully, and Quinn enjoys having the chance to finally be one of the cool kids in school. But David sparks a series of chaotic events, when he secretly uses the time machine to go back in time for a shot at a second chance with Jessie at Lollapalooza. David finally gets Jessie to be his girlfriend, but his decision results in a domino effect with natural disasters, brutal accidents, and deaths.

There’s a part in the movie, where David introduces the strict rules for time travel to the group. The first rule? No one for any reason is allowed to time travel or “jump” alone. As soon as David introduced this rule, you had to know someone would break it, and David was a top candidate to do it because of his feelings for Jessie. 

After David’s failed attempts to cherry pick certain events from the past to fix his mess, he finally realizes he has to destroy the time machine to reset everything back to normal. David had to make the tough choice, knowing he would sacrifice his relationship with Jessie if he did it. The butterfly effect is always a crucial foundation for any time travel film, but Project Almanac’s approach to it kills a lot of the suspense here, with a predictable step by step process.

Project Almanac hits every time travel movie checkpoint you would expect, but there’s also a solid story with a good amount of emotion. When David goes back in time to destroy the time machine, he finally gets a chance to say goodbye to his father before he dies in a car crash. Quinn pleaded with David to find another way to fix things without destroying the time machine, because he didn’t want to lose his status as the big man on campus at school. That might sound ridiculous, but I do get Quinn’s point of view. Quinn, David, and Adam are geeky kids. At that stage of your life, depending on your mindset, being one of the cool kids in high school is a big deal.

David made a lot of mistakes, but he’s a good hard working guy. He wanted to find a way to pay for his tuition at MIT without his mother, Kathy (Amy Landecker) selling the house, or having to overwork herself to pay for it. And he wanted to finish building the time machine to honor his dad, a man who died when David was still a small child.

There’s a solid heartfelt story here, with a cast of likable characters. Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D’Elia, and Sam Lerner delivered solid performances, especially Weston. There’s a strong sense of urgency during the finale, when David finally realizes he’s made a huge mistake, and Weston’s believable panicky and distraught hysterics are fantastic. 

Project Almanac is a decent enough time travel movie, and it also works as a coming of age story with the high school life side of things. The problem is, the found-footage POV gimmick is the only unique aspect for Project Almanac, and there’s noticeable problems for how they use it. I pointed this out earlier, but once David decides to go back to Lollapalooza alone to fix things with Jessie, it’s just too easy to see where the story is going and how the ending will play out.

Rating- 5/10