Movie Review: PROJECT ALMANAC

Before we even leave the driveway with this review, let’s establish a few things. I saw trailer for Project Almanac late last year, around autumn, and was utterly appalled by how vapid the film looked. A found footage film about a group of high school teens who make a fantastic discovery that changes their life for the better but then for the worse? I mean, the plot synopsis itself isn’t that distinctive but by pairing it with the found footage aesthetic, Project Almanac was doomed to be compared to the surprise hit Chronicle and the trailer did it no favors by following the exact same beats as the Chronicle trailer did. Worse, the time travel plot was so clearly going down the same route as The Butterfly Effect, I would’ve bet a c-note on it. I had zero interest in the film and so, when I went in to see it, I had expectations so low, it couldn’t possibly have been as bad as I expected.

It was, though.

The very first thing about the film that pissed me off was the cast. Our lead is, naturally, a stupidly attractive guy who they threw glasses on in an attempt to negate the fact that he doesn’t even look slightly plausible as an uber-nerd. Now, this wouldn’t be so egregious an offence if his two nerd friends weren’t, respectively, a doughy loudmouth and a Filipino (or at least played by one). But the female characters are perfect specimens of attractiveness, naturally! I digress; I wasn’t initially as irritated by the trio of geeks during the opening scene, which is actually well-written, giving the nerd trio an experiment to test that was both amusing and true to life. Yet even this proved to be a massive bait-and-switch; when they start getting into the time machine stuff, the writers stopped caring at all about being even remotely accurate with any of the science, to the point where they openly wink at the audience about how absurd it all is. Why even bother opening the film with an exciting tease of “hey, here’s something we pulled from real life, isn’t that cool” only to go 100% fantasy with the rest of the story? Why couldn’t the first scene have had something as insanely creative as the opening robot fight from Big Hero 6, which also would’ve served to establish that, yes, this is a fantasy so initiate suspension of disbelief now. And, speaking of Big Hero 6, even that movie handled the dead parent(s) trope better, mainly by de-emphasizing it, while Project Almanac reminds us multiple times that the father died in a tragic car accident ten years ago, to the point where you might think it’s an actual plot point. It kind of isn’t? We’ll get to that later.

Before we get into spoiler territory, let’s return to the Chronicle comparison, a film this one so obnoxiously strives to be. One of the really surprising things about Chronicle was how effectively the director, Josh Trank, used his handheld footage to capture everything, often by splicing in footage from multiple cameras and, more importantly, making the damaged main character a study in selfie-obsessed egotism. Instead, that role is handed off to the protagonist’s sister, and her camera intrudes obsessively into his life, even before their time travel escapades get them in over their heads. The “document everything” shtick wears thin about halfway through the film and even though there’s enough breathing room that most viewers won’t feel nauseous, I often wished the director had simply opted for a hybrid filming style instead. At 20 minutes longer than Chronicle, it’s exhausting frankly. Particularly, the pillow talk scene went on for way too long, as does the music festival, much of the film feeling like the director was simply obligated to insert these cliches per his contract with MTV.

But the tedious film style isn’t even the worse offender; the script is awful in subtle ways. If you don’t think about the film too hard, it has a well-executed arc that will satisfy casual, younger viewers who just want a thrill. But it’s the cliches that the film employs as the plot unravels that I found noxious. The biggest insult is that, when the main character starts getting reckless with his time traveling, guess who the first character is to suffer the consequences? The Filipino, of course. But the other insult is the relationship that develops between the protagonist and his love interest, one that informs the core conflict of the film.

I’m getting into spoiler territory here but don’t worry, if you haven’t guessed how the story develops when boy meets girl, you probably never saw The Butterfly Effect, you lucky person you, in which case, steer clear of both that film and this one. For those of you who have seen The Butterfly Effect, let’s talk about how Project Almanac actually is more insulting than that film, somehow. The big problem is that everything is set off when the geeky protagonist fumbles his chance to “get” with the girl of his dreams because, as he explains later, he didn’t think a girl like her really liked a guy like him. What, a really handsome, smart but not annoyingly nerdy guy who got accepted to MIT? Yeah, wow, how unlikely! So, he blames her for his failure, of course, but instead of actually making him take responsibility for his egotism and stupidity and for risking everyone’s lives and lying to her, she just loves him too much. So, there you go, desperate geeks who are too intimidated by beautiful woman and blame them for it, the truth is that they really do love you and will totally forgive you because you did insanely stupid things for them to prove your love. BUT WAIT! The film almost metes out the punishment the main character deserves for this sort of behavior but the last few minutes of Project Almanac are literally the worst thing about it; you think everything went wrong and the film is a lesson in why you have to learn to live with your mistakes but nope, everything’s all right, the main character gets the girl AND gets to time travel and just ugggghhhh…

Project Almanac is The Butterfly Effect remade for the found footage era, with all the horrible awfulness that is implied by that. The positive reviews out there for this film are a sad reminder of how quickly film criticism forgets the petty crimes of the past.

PS: This film forced me to witness a live rendition of Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive.” Please note that I can’t actually give a negative score for the film in the soundtrack category. But do me a favor and IMAGINE that it got a negative five in that category. Also, I hate giant drums now. Thanks, Project Almanac.

Project Almanac is in theaters Nationwide now.