The new time travel/found footage/teen dramedy tries to do so much, yet succeeds at very little.

Found footage films have had a mixed track record to say the least. For every Blair Witch Project or Chronicle there’s a sub-par counter-part such as Quarantine or The Last Exorcism. What makes them so difficult is usually trying to find innovative ways to tell a story that has been told multiple times, but in a completely new angle (both in a story and cinematography sense).

Movies that try to deal with the immensely complex concept of time-travel have a mixed track record as well. Again, for every Back to the Future or Looper there are stinkers like The Time Travelers Wife or Timeline. Time travel is such a complex concept to get across to audiences that most of these films either try too hard to explain the concept or give up halfway through giving audiences a seemingly half-baked idea.

So what does Project Almanac try to do? Well it tries to do the unthinkable by combing two of the toughest genres/plot devices in film in found footage and time travel. Add in a cliché teen dramedy and you have a headache-inducing trifecta.

The plot revolves around a group of teenagers who discover a secret blueprint to build a time machine and construct one. At first, it’s just used for fun. They use it to go back to pass a quiz, to get revenge on a bully and even go to Lollapalooza. They soon realize, however, that time travel isn’t just fun and games and that there are serious consequences to their actions.  

Overall, Project Almanac is mostly a mess. Sure, the scenes where the teenagers are having fun with the time travel is entertaining, but when the film tries to explain what is going on, it just stumbles. Many of the time-traveling elements are just glossed over and so much science jargon is spoken without context that there is no credibility to what they are saying.

The found footage style is also completely misused throughout the film. There were many times where there was no logical explanation as to why a handheld camera would be in that scene in real life. Not to mention the film features many unexplainable cuts that simply do not make sense for the found footage genre. That might sound like nitpicking, but when a film wants to succeed in a certain genre, it needs to commit to the genre’s rules.

The characters and their counterpart actors are all fine, but clichés that have been seen in hundreds of movies before. Things are kept light and fun for most of the runtime, but when the actors are forced to show their dramatic chops, they are mostly flat and unconvincing. One of the main reasons Chronicle was so memorable was because of the acting. Dane DeHaan, who is now a part of the Amazing Spider-Man franchise (if that is still a thing), and Michael B. Jordan, who is now a part of the Fantastic Four franchise, gave depth and dimensions to their characters that is glaringly missing in Project Almanac.

            Some audiences will find Project Almanac to be entertaining and fun enough to watch for 101 minutes, which is completely fine. For those who want more out of their found footage/time travel/teen dramedy experience, you can look elsewhere. Actually you can’t because there is nothing else like Project Almanac, which might be a good thing.

GRADE: D+