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Project Almanac isn't without wit or originality, but its thin story and irritating found-footage camerawork ultimately make it difficult to recommend. Read critic reviews
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Watch Project Almanac with a subscription on Amazon Prime Video, Paramount Plus, rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu.
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Project Almanac videos
Project Almanac: Official Clip - Timequake
Project Almanac: Official Clip - Backstage at Lollapallooza
Project Almanac: Official Clip - Groundhog Day This
Project Almanac: Official Clip - It's Yesterday!
Project Almanac: Official Clip - I'm Everywhere B*tch
Project Almanac: Official Clip - Winning the Lottery
Project Almanac: Official Clip - Imagine Dragons
Project Almanac: Official Clip - What Did You Change?
Project Almanac: Official Clip - Did We Have Sex?
Project Almanac: Official Clip - Say Goodbye to Your Son
Project Almanac Photos
Movie Info
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.
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Rating: PG-13 (Some Language|Sexual Content)
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Genre: Sci-fi, Mystery & thriller
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Original Language: English
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Director: Dean Israelite
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Producer: Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller
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Writer: Jason Harry Pagan, Andrew Deutschman
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Release Date (Theaters): wide
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Release Date (Streaming):
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Box Office (Gross USA): $22.3M
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Runtime:
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Distributor: Paramount Pictures
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Production Co: Platinum Dunes
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Sound Mix: Datasat, Dolby Digital
Cast & Crew
News & Interviews for Project Almanac
Critic Reviews for Project Almanac
Audience Reviews for Project Almanac
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Produced by Michael Bay, Project Almanac is a rather generic found footage, sci-fi thriller. While rummaging through some of his father's old papers David Raskin comes across a design for a time machine, and (with the help of his friends) attempts to build it. The plot is pretty ridiculous and none of performances are very good. Additionally, there's no real reason why these kids would be filming themselves; at least outside of the time travel experiments. Yet when the actual time travel plot kicks in, some interesting things are done with causality and paradoxes. Project Almanac delivers a few entertaining thrill, but overall it's a poorly made film.
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You start out thinking it's a little dumb, and then the more you objectively think about it, the stupider you realise it actually is. But a movie doesn't have to be Logic-Prime to be entertaining, and Project Almanac, more or less, fits the "entertaining" bill. It's nice to see the "Found Footage" archetype being used for something other than Horror, but it's not nice to be seeing it at all. It's constantly being used as an excuse for poor acting and dodgy effects, when in reality it makes those things *more* obvious, on top of the fact that it's just plain annoying, and contrived.
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This is a film that has some pretty decent ideas about time travel. Perhaps it doesn't offer anything that you haven't seen in any time travel film you've ever seen, but it offers some fairly interesting scenarios about the ripple effect one small change could've caused. I think they do this in a fairly dramatic and over-the-top fashion, but it does illustrate its point fairly well. I will get to that later. First things first. The problem is that the film, for the first 70 minutes or so, feels like every teen comedy had sex with time travel. I get the reasoning behind choosing to go this route, but it's not like it was actually any interesting to watch as a viewer. They go back to win the lottery, they go back to pass an oral exam, they go back to give their bullies their comeuppance. They travel back to go to a Lollapalooza festival show. The reasoning behind this is that they're doing completely trivial and useless things with what is the most important invention, probably, in the history of mankind, instead of doing things that will change the world for the better. There's this subplot where David and Christina's father died in a car crash when David was 7 and part of David's happiness in succeeding to build this machine is so he can go back to prevent his death. This is actually paid off in a fairly poignant moment near the film's end when future David, upon meeting his father, tells him that there are no second chances. It's probably the only moment of the film with some real emotional resonance and you wonder what might've been if they spent a little more time on building character as opposed to focusing so much on things that don't really matter in the long run. Like I mentioned, the first 70 minutes of the film are fairly pointless. Then comes the Lollapalooza show, which is when everything changes. Essentially, David screws up with Jessie and he decides to go back, alone, to try and fix things. He does succeed and he gets the girl. After this happens, however, a pretty terrible plane crash happens that and other horrible events across the world happen and that, they surmise, it dated all the way back to when they went to the Lollapalooza show. So the group decides to go back in time to before the show so they can miss it and set things right. David, selfishly enough, disagrees with this and he decides to go back in time on his own, again, something they agreed to not do, to fix something that would've negated the plane crash. Ok this is fine and good. But, out of all the things they did, why did the Lollapalooza show cause this? It just seems like they're picking and choosing because they are, essentially, changing the past. So why did that not cause a ripple effect? Why did them winning the lottery have no ripple effect? They changed things so much and yet none of that caused anything to go wrong. The Lollapalooza show, however, did. They're assuming that you know it's because David traveled alone and change the course of his relationship with Jessie for the better. The group made it one of their rules to never go back alone, it's not like the machine knew this. Why did David going back and changing one small thing have this huge effect? And that's the butterfly effect theory, one small thing can change the course of the future, but they do so in this film in an incredibly over-the-top manner. I didn't find it to be satisfying storytelling at all, cause they just assume that you'll just go with it without asking any questions. It doesn't even make sense in its own context. But, fine, whatever. David keeps going back when things keep getting more and more complicated and his mind if blurring all of the things that he's done during his travels in trying to fix things. This is where the film is at its best. It's not like it's great, but it is, at least, a highlight of the film. The film is found footage style, so you know what to expect from that. The writing is not particularly good, they're just hoping that the concept will intrigue you enough to overlook that fact. It didn't. It's certainly a watchable film, at best, but it has some pretty huge flaws that definitely hold it back. The first 70 minutes being teen wish fulfillment bullshit didn't really do much for me. The last 40 minutes were ok, but it's far too late by this point to truly make anything of it. It's fine and watchable for what it is, but this certainly won't age well as the years go by. You won't be missing anything if you decide to skip this, trust me.
jesse o Super Reviewer -
Interesting and powerful movie, yet so many references from movies like Back to the future, Cloverfield.. almost felt like a rip off at some points.. how ever I didn't really mind because the film really entertained me.
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