Project Almanac

For a Sci-Fi thriller, Project Almanac is disappointingly low key.  This is a "found footage" movie about a group of teens who discover the secret of time travel.  And what do they do when they've discovered its secret?  They use it to get better grades on tests, get back at the mean girls who pick on them, and go to a rock concert that they missed out on the first time around.

Let me repeat: they discover the secret of time travel!  Do you have any idea how amazing that sounds?  Just think of the things you could do, and the mind literally spins with the possibilities.  The movie finds a way to explain away its own lack of inspiration.  It turns out the kids can only travel back a few weeks or days.  They can't travel back to 1939, and "kill Hitler", as one of the kids suggests initially.  As the kids work on improving the time traveling technology, they figure out how to travel back a little bit further, to the point that one of the heroes can visit his own birthday party from 10 years ago.  But that's still really no excuse for the film's overall lack of imagination.  Watching Project Almanac, I was reminded of the last "found footage" Sci-Fi movie we got, Earth to Echo.  That was the movie about a group of kids who discover a little alien, and then spend the rest of the movie carrying it in their backpack.  Both suffer from a lack of imagination, and both suffer from a pointless handheld camera gimmick that never works in the film's favor.

Like a lot of films of its type, we find ourselves asking why is someone constantly filming all of this with a camera, and how do they get some of these spectacularly complex shots that look too professional to be filmed by a teenager who's just goofing around with their friends?  This is a story that probably would have been better served with a traditional narrative, anyway.  It's the story of David (Jonny Weston), a high school science wiz who is trying to follow in the footsteps of his genius inventor father, who died in a car accident on David's 7th birthday.  While exploring his dad's old workshop in the basement, he discovers a secret compartment in the floor.  Turns out dad was working on a top secret military experiment involving time travel, and he conveniently left all the blueprints and information on how to build one behind.  Along with his sister, Christina (Ginny Gardner), who feels the need to film every instant of every day for some reason, and his two nerdy best friends Quinn (Sam Lerner) and Adam (Allen Evangelista), they decide to finish dad's work and build the time machine.

When David and his friends realize what they have, they decide to have fun, like winning the lottery and using the money to buy cool cars or throw massive parties.  But then, things start to slowly go wrong.  When David tries to go back by himself to fix an event with a girl he likes (Sofia Black-D'Ella) so that it goes in his favor, he somehow winds up screwing up the present.  And the more he travels back in time to fix the new mistakes he makes, the worse things get in the present.  It gets to the point that it is hard to sympathize with David, especially when he becomes reluctant to change events that will end in tragedy for his friends, because he's afraid of losing his new girlfriend.  Sure, it's probably realistic that a teenager with this kind of power would become very self-centered, and may not care about how his actions are effecting those around him.  But it gets harder to get behind him as the film goes on.

When I say that Project Almanac would have worked better as a traditional movie, I really mean it.  The shaky, unsteady and constantly moving camera style employed here actually made me feel physically ill at times, to the point that I had to shut my eyes for a minute or two until I felt better.  The "found footage" style adds nothing, and is not even all that interesting to look at.  It's simply a gimmick that distracts from the movie so much, it works against it.  There are some good qualities to the script, such as some genuinely sweet moments between David and the girl of his dreams, and also a couple funny one liners.  But it's so hard to focus on anything when the camera won't stop shaking.  This movie not only needs more imagination, but it needs to be filmed a completely different way.

This is simply a movie that should have been more fun than it is.  The kids needed to be smarter, and the stuff that they do with the ability to travel back in time should have been a lot more creative.  This really isn't that bad of a movie, but when its filmmaking style is making you feel nauseous, it's hard to concentrate on anything else.

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