The good casting fails to revive the time-travel genre with this film

Director: Dean Israelite

Starring: Sam Lerner, Jonny Weston, Allen Evangelista, Virginia Gardner

Rating: 12A

Running Time: 106mins

Release Date: February 16th 2015

In 2012, the found-footage super-hero film CHRONICLE started a quirky sub-genre, crossing teen power fantasies with shaky camera work. It was intelligent and well-measured, managing to capture the feelings associated with life-changing discoveries. CHRONICLE’s message was particularly engaging, as once the protagonists mastered powers, their paths diverged, leading to a dramatic climax.

PROJECT ALMANAC also centres on youngsters dealing with a discovery that grants them unchecked freedom. This trope was prevalent in the 80s, with films like FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR, THE BOY WHO COULD FLY, and THE GOONIES. Creating worlds in which children were suddenly confronted with their wildest wishes attracted adventure orientated audiences.

The major difference between then and now is the shaky-cam technique more suited to the minimalist horror spawned by THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. The realist aesthetic of found-footage often acts as a plot device here too, but is ultimately  relied upon to immerse the viewer in an authenticity ‘ride’.

In the film, John Weston (David Raskin), a promising MIT hopeful, comes across his father’s proto-type time-machine with his geeky friends, sister, and the girl of his dreams. The group realise that they can use the machine to their advantage; gaining lottery money, reliving summer festivals with VIP passes and so on. Unbeknownst to them, their meddling creates a number of ripples in the space-time continuum. After feeling the burden of responsibility for negative events occuring outside the original time line, tension mounts.

The cast do a good job in creating an atmosphere of comradery, and their interactions are wry in places. The acting is competent, although some of the characters are unimaginatively generic. The hand-held style – instead of adding to the film – makes the experience wholly frustrating; blurring its intelligibility in what is already a frenetically paced script.

Additionally, exposition is overlooked, leading to a script that veers into ambiguity time and again. Although the film holds itself together, it unwinds in its final third. The story’s time-travel plot is lazily examined, and that’s if the audience unquestionably accepts its logic in the first place.

John’s attempts to rewrite history naïvely ignore the variables involved when the ripples of chaos theory, creating further complications. PROJECT ALMANAC fails to address its content in the detail that films like THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT does, lacking gravitas and entertainment value because of it. Too much screen time is spent setting up the premise, ending in a last ditch scramble to build drama.

Themes recently explored in more depth (IT FOLLOWS) crop up in PROJECT ALMANAC, but much like its wayward plotting, they are quickly disposed in its search to excite. The encroaching responsibility of adulthood, tangled with apocalyptic anxiety, is faintly echoed throughout the film – especially during the festival scene – but the script does no justice to the hyper-modern sense of teen subjectivity populating cinema. 

PROJECT ALMANAC is a deeply underwhelming attempt at breathing life into the time-travel film. It falls short when compared to films that have detailed plots which focus on a steady approach to expositional intrigue. Although a so-so-effort, the film falters in a payoff ending that lacks both dramatic force and explanatory value.  

Verdict

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