Review of Project Almanac (2015) by Andrew H — 22 May 2015

After the initial romp, it falls pretty flat for me.

Each movie is it's own world right? So personally, I wouldn't go into say, The Avengers and really over think anything. A movie about time travel however, begs to be questioned. You are questioning everything since the very first jump. Let's throw away everything we've "learned" about time travel from every other movie for just a few....ahhhhh, much better, that'll get you to maybe enjoy a bit more of the movie. No considering things like the butterfly effect or temporal paradoxes, good.

Well, then here comes the movie over-thinking itself. Going back causes completely random ripples. Check. Some events don't seem to be connected, but technically are. Check. Encountering yourself either from the future or past causes some weird $h^t to happen. Check. Alright, not so bad. Still following everything the movie's throwing at me thus far.

Then, the end comes and I'm like...what? So yes, even a most positive and non hyper-critical viewer will have issues with the end of this movie, I'm 100% sure of it. That is, unless you just gave up from 45 mins into it and decided to turn your brain completely off.

4 stars initially because up until the 3/4 mark to end, it wasn't too bad a ride. We get to see these kids finish building and use their time machine until things go haywire and we get to see some of the consequences of what messing with time entails (although let's face it, it has been done to death). - 2 stars because there are some outstanding issues with the end of the movie. I'll talk about them a bit below, if you care to read it and spoil your watch. All in all, this isn't regrettable, but I don't care to own or watch it ever again. I recommend it if you have nothing else to watch. It's a solid B movie at the very least.

Spoilers below:

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Why did she phase herself out when he didn't, despite seeing themselves for what is roughly the same amount of time? First of all, they've all encountered themselves in the same 'area' more than one time, so let's say that they need to see each other for this phasing to occur. Shouldn't she then have known to simply look away or turn around and run away or, MOVE? If she's simply turned her back to herself then shouldn't she have been OK?

Why was the camera left behind? If the events weren't a paradox and indeed everything that happened DID NOT happen as it did before, then how could the camera possibly be left behind? He destroyed the time machine that allowed him to initially travel back, so then shouldn't the events have been wiped clean? Thusly, why would the camera exist out of the blue?