Heading in to the theater for my screening of Project Almanac, I had heard very little. The solitary trailer I had seen months earlier had sparked my interest, and the idea of “Chronicle with time travel” sounded compelling enough to give it a go. For the uninitiated, Chronicle was 2012’s highly heralded found-footage style film (Not sure why everyone seems to forget about Cloverfield, although that’s besides the point…) that followed a group of teenagers as they created trouble and then had to work their way out of it.
Anyway, Project Almanac – a title which may or may not be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Back to the Future 2’s sport almanac plot line – follows a group of five teenagers who uncover a time travel device and begin a plan to go back in time and change everything they have ever regretted, to live life with no regrets. Things like not chickening out and getting the girl, taking a trip to Woodstock or Lollapalooza, winning the lottery, things like that. What our cast of characters don’t realize is that everything they do has a ripple effect and that everything they’re doing – no matter how small – can have catastrophic consequences. Apparently “The Butterfly Effect” was never released in this universe.
The story telling in Project Almanac is certainly nothing special. Littered throughout the films 106 minute run time is your standard incline to a surprising twist, a new conflict coming in to play, and then the pay off as the protagonist tries their best to fix the problems they’ve started. The curves and turns the film takes are interesting, sure, but they’re certainly predictable. As soon as the groundwork of the plot is lain down, you’ll be able to see almost everything that’s going to happen – especially if you’ve watched any of the trailers for the movie.
Some plot details also left me scratching my head, with the most odd being when one of the friends used his new abilities to bring a set of food trucks to the school in the middle of the day, paying to feed the entire student body. This on its own of course is believable in context, the plot hole comes from the fact that no administration would simply dismiss the entire school just to allow them to eat free food. Maybe that’s just me nitpicking though.
My other biggest problem with Project Almanac was the way they handled the “found footage” camera angles. When filming with a camera, there’s a certain way you expect it to be held. At times, the various camera people had the angles in ways that would never be natural nor comfortable for anyone to hold a camera, leading to completely unbelievable angles. The camera also defied the laws of the movie at times, with the recurring example being the time travel device giving off an EMP-blast when it was used, which apparently the camera was always immune to.
While I’d be lying if I tried to call Project Almanac a bad movie, I’d be doing quite the same if I tried to call it a wonderful movie. Project Almanac unfortunately seems to fall in to the category of “just a movie” and it’s not one that will be remembered for long. I myself am even hard pressed to remember much of the movie not twenty four hours after leaving the theater. Had I paid the $14 entrance fee to see it, I would certainly have been upset.
Project Almanac beats the rating of “decent” and that’s about all you can say about it. This fact comes as upsetting because the time travel is really quite well thought out, and even after watching it looking for plot holes, I was unable to find any. If you’re looking for a matinee to kill a few hours on a Sunday with, this is the movie for you; otherwise, take your money and go download Cloverfield and Chronicle – you’ll be much better off.
If only the team behind this movie had there own version of Project Almanac, maybe they’d of been able to go back in time and stop themselves from making such a sub-par movie.
Austin Griffith is LevelSave.com’s Editor-in-Chief. LevelSave.com is your home for exclusive news, editorials, and reviews. You can find him on Twitter @AustinG909 or email him at [email protected]
