Project Almanac - Mainly for the teens (and possibly me)

‘Project Almanac’ is about time travel.  No, that shouldn’t be what I open this review with.  I’ll start again... ‘Project Almanac’ is a ‘found footage’ movie.  As if Hollywood wasn’t filled with films which consist entirely of someone annoying (unseen) character constantly filming every single aspect of people’s lives with a shaky camera then we have one more here.

Normally, ‘found footage’ films tend to be linked with the ‘horror’ genre, thus making the very idea that someone would be stupid enough to keep filming while being chased by vampires/witches/werewolves (delete as applicable) pretty hard to swallow.  However, ‘The Almanac Project’ fits more into the ‘teen sci-fi’ bracket.  You may have to suspend your disbelief when the story shows how a gang of teenagers invent a time machine from some old plans found in an attic using a broken Xbox and a car battery (no, seriously), but, once you get over that, it’s not that bad.

Like I said, it’s probably mainly aimed at teenagers as a primary viewing audience, as there is the inevitable love story ‘sub-plot’ thrown in there.  However, as a fully-grown adult who’s grown out of schoolgirls falling in love with sparkling vampires, I enjoyed it because it did address a few sci-fi principals which are often overlooked when dealing with the prospect of time travel

All the kids play their parts well (or as well as you’d expect – largely – unknown teenagers to do so) and do their best to appear natural in front of a camera.  However, the main let down is that when things start to go wrong (don’t they always with time travel?) some of the kids will go off on their own to do (no spoilers here) all sorts of naughty things and still feel the need to document their misdemeanours on film at all times (hardly the actions of master criminals!).

It’s not a long film and doesn’t outlive its runtime.  I can see most teenagers enjoying it because it’s largely about them, plus if you have a soft spot for sci-fi in general you may like also like it (don’t worry – it’s not as ‘wet’ as most teenage love stories that are mixed with the supernatural/horror/sci-fi).

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that