By Arianna Smith Editor
The concept of time travel takes on a realistic and ominous view in the new movie Project Almanac, which premiered in theaters on Jan. 30. The movie is directed by Dean Isrealite and written by Andrew Deutschman, Jason Pagan and Andrew Stark.
The main plot of the movie follows a genius high school student named David Raskins (Jonny Weston), his sister (Virginia Gardener) and their group of friends after David, desperate to gain entry to a prestigious university and save the family home from being sold, searches his dead father’s laboratory and discovers blueprints for a “Temporal Relocation Device”- i.e, a time machine.
At first, the teens are psyched about their new invention and twist time to their liking. As the movie progresses, the full scope of their careless time jumps is revealed in devastating ways. Of course being about high schoolers, the movie has no shortage of jokes and racy scenes and innuendoes, so it may be best to leave the younger kids at home.
“On the whole, this is a good B-movie that hits it modest marks, said David Edelstein from New York Magazine.
Project Almanac is filmed from a first person point of view, commonly called “Found Footage format”, with the camera witnessing events as though it were being filmed from the perspective of one of the characters. Surprisingly, critics hated the format, calling it gimmicky and distracting.
“Maybe it will work better on home video where shaky camera movement is less likely to provoke nausea, but it certainly doesn't work on a big screen,” said James Berardinelli of Reelviews.
As with any movie made after 2009, the CGI and special effects were polished and believable without being too cheesy so there were no complaints there.
“I liked the graphics,” said moviegoer Mkayla Jackson, “and the story made you think a lot.”
RottenTomatoes.com was unable to get over the filming format and gave the movie a sad three out of ten stars.
Phoenix Rising decided to be nicer and gifts Project Almanac with three out of five, putting it safely in the middle of the pack.
