Review of Project Almanac (2015) by Bill M — 01 Mar 2015

One of those movies that is fun entirely in spite of itself, Project Almanac has many fucking issues as a movie, for one, why is it a found footage movie? what purpose dose it being shot in this now increasingly wearying format serve? none quite frankly, and I can imagine it being a far stronger movie otherwise, the shaky cam angle ruins so much about this film.

Sure, a Cloverfield esc suspension of disbelief has always been required for films like this but there are scenes where it's truly distracting that someone would have set up a camera in a particular situation ( why the fuck do they film their breaking into a school and subsequent stealing of itinerary, who dose that?) I think it may be time to put this whole way of shooting movies to bed now, if just for a decade or so, even the recent, otherwise very brilliant vampire movie Afflicted was often hurt by being shot like this.

The other problem is it's almost hilarious lack of ambition or imagination when it comes to the time travel scenario, they fuck about doing things like going back to a music festival they missed a few days earlier, or to ace a science class, or to chat up a girl a bit better, the movie gets much less interesting when they get the machine up and running actually, I mean the furthest they travel back is to 2004! and it isnt nearly as clever with it's plot as it thinks, in fact the full circle swing round of the ending, and the revelation of why the prescent day version of the main character appears in his own seventh b-day video, is not very gasp worthy really.

Also the dialogue is sometimes unintelligible, which is yet another problem with it's found footage framing. But as i've said it has much charm and is a worthy addition to the time travel movie pantheon, if you go in knowing the limitations you will have a very good time with it.

I just would have done it much better.