Project Almanac (2015) | Movie News & Review | - Pop Movee

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PROJECT ALMANAC (2015) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

project almanac (2015) movie

Genre | Science Fiction

Classification | M

Running time | 106 minutes

Released | 26 February 2015

cast

Jonny Weston ... David Raskin
Sofia Black-D'Elia ... Jessie Pierce
Sam Lerner ... Quinn Goldberg
Allen Evangelista ... Adam Le
Virginia Gardner ... Christina Raskin
Amy Landecker ... Kathy Raskin
Gary Weeks ... Ben Raskin
Katie Garfield ... Liv

director

Dean Israelite

writer

Jason Pagan ... (written by) (as Jason Harry Pagan) &
Andrew Deutschman ... (written by)

cinematographer

Matthew J. Lloyd

music

film editor

Martin Bernfeld
Julian Clarke

box office result

Worldwide $33,213,241

Australia $1,021,128

North America $22,348,241

the best dialogue

David Raskin: We didn't invent time travel. We just put it together with the instructions.
Quinn Goldberg: You make it sound like we got it at Ikea.

Quinn Goldberg: We can all agree on something, right? I mean, you have to kill Hitler. That's like Time Travel 101.
David Raskin: Naturally, but none of us even speak German. So...
Christina Raskin: Well, that's why God invented Google Translator, David.
Quinn Goldberg: Exactly!
David Raskin: They didn't have wifi in 1939.

David Raskin: This is Project Almanac, Experiment 1, Trial 1, temporal distance: 60 seconds.
Christina Raskin: In English, please.
David Raskin: Uh, it means we're gonna send your crappy toy a minute back into the past.

PROJECT ALMANAC (2015) MOVIE IMAGES

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Posters

PROJECT ALMANAC (2015) STORY SYNOPSIS

David Raskin (Jonny Weston) is a high-school science nerd who dreams of going to MIT. When he and his friends (Sam Lerner, Allen Evangelista) find his late father's plans for a "temporal displacement device," David can't wait to start tinkering. When they finally get the device to work, the teenagers jump at the opportunity to manipulate time in their favor -- but their joy is short-lived when they begin to discover the consequences of their actions.

PROJECT ALMANAC (2015) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 23 February 2015
Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐

PROJECT ALMANNAC is a low-budget attempt to capitalise on the recent teen science fiction movie trend combined with the "found footage" approach that had worked well for micro budget horror films. First-time feature film director Dean Israelite provides the film with enough flair to keep scenes visually interesting, but a thread-bare story stifles its overall impact. The film, from Platinum Dunes producing duo Andrew Form & Brad Fuller (backed by Michael Bay), is pitched squarely at the youth market that embraced recent science fiction releases such as THE MAZE RUNNER and THE HUNGER GAMES series. The big difference is that those films have been developed off solid literary bases, whereas PROJECT ALMANAC has been written especially for the screen by relative newcomers.

David Ruskin (Jonny Weston) and his sister Christina (Virginia Gardner) are having a tough time of their teen years. The death of their father in a car accident ten years before has left their family financially strapped. David has the chance to go to the prestigious Stanford University on a scholarship, but is devastated when he receives only a fraction of the amount he needs to attend. In desperation, he turns to his father's old scientific work to see if he can uncover a research piece that he can submit to Stanford to secure a full scholarship. Stumbling across an old video camera, he finds something astounding; an image of his 18 year old self reflected in the family’s lounge room mirror on the day of his seventh birthday.

PROJECT ALMANAC is not an evenly-paced film and, in some instances, the story meanders from one plot point to another, while other scenes happen at break-neck pace. The first part of the film takes a while to get moving and key character introductions are squandered. People whom the audience are meant to care about are not developed early enough and events later in the film seem a little disjointed because pf the lack of investment by Israelite and his screenwriters Andrew Deutchsman & Jason Pagan. That said, the other three principal cast members, Sofia Black-D’Elia, Sam Lerner & Allen Evangelista, do enough with the screen time afforded them to help lift Project Almanac to an above average product. In the hands of more experienced writers, PROJECT ALMANAC could have been as compelling as a film like Josh Trank's CHRONICLE from which it takes many of its stylistic cues and works hard to achieve for time-travel what Trank's film did for wannabe super heroes.

The film’s premise allows for the time-traveller’s Pandora’s Box to open, as the five teens go too far and start to impact on the timeline, creating larger problems in the future the more they meddle with events. Like many time-travel adventures, the weight of continuity is not only a problem for the characters; it’s an impost on the film makers. Coupled with the “found footage” mise-en-scene, the further the story moves, the less believable the film becomes. The Go-Pro cameras that take the place of the traditional video camera seem to be powered by some sort of micro nuclear reactor, as the batteries never seem to run out; allowing all the important action to be caught on film. The actor’s dialogue is also problematic. Young Christina Ruskin is the principal videographer of the group’s adventures, but on more than one occasion her camera is too far away to capture sound. Miraculously, by virtue of the Go-Pro unit permanently strapped to her brother, one-on-one conversations are captured and integrated into the soundtrack, as there’s a boom mike positioned directly above the actor’s heads. This is one of the significant downsides of holding to the “found footage” approach for the film’s 106 minute running time.

PROJECT ALMANAC works hard to be likable and it wins points for making a big effort to entertain its audience. It’s far better than it ought to be given the relative inexperience of the main players in putting together a feature film. Its $12 million production budget is a trifle compared to the majority of Hollywood feature films and it won’t have to be seen by too many people to recoup both its production and marketing expenses. If that’s the case, it’s not unrealistic to expect to see a follow-up film in the next year or two. With a couple of more films under their collective belts, Dean Israelite and the team that brought PROJECT ALMANAC to the screen could fix the faults of this first film and produce something that far exceeds audience expectations.