''Project Almanac'' is a 2015 American
found footage science fiction film
Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as Extraterrestrial life in fiction, extraterrestria ...
directed by
Dean Israelite
Dean Israelite (born September 20, 1984) is a South African film director, writer, and producer, best known for directing the found footage film ''Project Almanac'' (2015), the 2017 reboot of ''Power Rangers (film), Power Rangers'', and the 2019 ...
in his
directorial debut
This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many filmmakers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early work ...
, and written by Jason Harry Pagan and Andrew Deutschman. The film stars
Jonny Weston,
Sofia Black-D'Elia,
Sam Lerner
Sam Lerner (born September 27, 1992) is an American actor, who is most known for his role as Geoff Schwartz on '' The Goldbergs'', Charles "Chowder" Peterson in '' Monster House'' and as Quinn Goldberg in '' Project Almanac''. Early life
Lerner i ...
, Allen Evangelista,
Virginia Gardner and
Amy Landecker
Amy Lauren Landecker (born September 30, 1969) is an American actress. She is known for her role as Sarah Pfefferman on the Amazon Prime Video, Amazon comedy-drama series ''Transparent (TV series), Transparent'' (2014–2019), as well as her supp ...
. The film tells the story of a group of high school students who build a time machine.
Filmed in 2013 and originally planned for an early 2014 release, the release date was later moved to January 30, 2015.
Upon release, ''Project Almanac'' received generally mixed reviews from critics and audiences, and grossed $33 million against a production budget of $12 million.
Plot
High school senior and aspiring inventor David Raskin is admitted into the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
, but is unable to afford its exorbitant tuition. Upon learning his mother, Kathy, will be forced to sell the family's house, David enlists his sister Christina and his friends Adam Lee and Quinn Goldberg to search through the belongings of his father Ben, an inventor who died on David's seventh birthday, in the hopes of finding something David can use to get a scholarship, filming themselves all the while.
He finds an old camera with a video recording of his seventh birthday party, in which he briefly spots himself (at his current age) in a reflection. Noting how he appears to be reaching for a basement light switch in the reflection, David and his friends enter the basement, which his father had forbidden.
The group pull the switch, activate a trapdoor, and find blueprints for a
time travel
Time travel is the hypothetical activity of traveling into the past or future. Time travel is a concept in philosophy and fiction, particularly science fiction. In fiction, time travel is typically achieved through the use of a device known a ...
device that Ben was developing for a project called "Project Almanac" for
DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...
, a government agency, which allows them to build a functional time machine. They successfully send a toy car back in time, but cause a
blackout in their neighborhood. When they get noticed by David's crush Jessie Pierce, whose
car's fuel cell they use to power the device, they recruit her into their experiment.
The expanded group travel back to the day before and break into Quinn's house, where he draws on the back of his sleeping past self's neck, but the past Quinn awakens, causing a feedback loop that nearly erases them both from the timeline. Following this, they agree to use the machine for personal gain on the condition that they don't time jump solo. While at
Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza () is an annual American four-day music festival held in Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park in Chicago. It originally started as a touring event in 1991, with Chicago becoming its permanent location beginning in 2005. Music genres i ...
three months prior, David hesitates to declare his feelings for Jessie, causing their relationship to become awkward, so he travels alone back to Lollapalooza to change that, leading to a future in which they are a couple.
When he returns, he finds that the blackout they caused in the first experiment resulted in their school's star basketball player getting hit by a car and breaking his leg, which in turn caused the player's pilot father to crash a commercial airliner, among other global catastrophes. David goes back alone to save the player and avert the plane crash, only to discover that Adam was hospitalized and in a coma after a car accident.
David continues to travel back in time alone to rectify the accidents, but Jessie catches him during one of his trips and accidentally sends herself back with him. She confronts him, and David admits to using the time machine to win her affection. As Jessie lambastes David for his deception, her past self appears, causing a feedback loop that erases Jessie from the timeline.
Seeing no other way out, David goes back to prevent the machine from ever being created, but it is out of hydrogen fuel. As David returns to the present, he is confronted by the police, who suspect him of being connected to Jessie's disappearance. Narrowly evading the resulting manhunt, David is able to break into his school and obtain a hydrogen canister. He activates the machine just as the police break in and sends himself back to his seventh birthday party ten years ago.
In the basement, David confronts Ben, who recognizes him and realizes that he will eventually complete the machine. David convinces Ben of the machine's dangers and tells him that he should say goodbye to his son before destroying the blueprints and a vital component. David is erased from the timeline, though he accidentally leaves behind his camera.
In the alternate timeline, David and Christina go through their father's belongings when they find Ben's camera and the previous timeline's camera. While they are shocked by the second camera's footage of the previous timeline's events, David approaches Jessie at school, displays knowledge of the future, and confides in her that they are about to "change the world".
Cast
*
Jonny Weston as David Raskin, Christina’s brother, and best friend to Adam and Quinn
*
Sofia Black-D'Elia as Jessie Pierce, David’s longtime crush
*
Sam Lerner
Sam Lerner (born September 27, 1992) is an American actor, who is most known for his role as Geoff Schwartz on '' The Goldbergs'', Charles "Chowder" Peterson in '' Monster House'' and as Quinn Goldberg in '' Project Almanac''. Early life
Lerner i ...
as Quinn Goldberg, best friend to Adam and David
*
Allen Evangelista as Adam Le, best friend to Quinn and David
*
Virginia Gardner as Christina Raskin, David’s sister
*
Amy Landecker
Amy Lauren Landecker (born September 30, 1969) is an American actress. She is known for her role as Sarah Pfefferman on the Amazon Prime Video, Amazon comedy-drama series ''Transparent (TV series), Transparent'' (2014–2019), as well as her supp ...
as Kathy Raskin, David and Christina’s mother and Ben's wife
*
Gary Weeks
Gary Weeks is an American film and television actor; he is also a film producer and screenwriter.
Biography
Gary Weeks was born in Wiesbaden, Hessen, Federal Republic of Germany on a U.S. airbase. He was raised in Georgia, attended high sch ...
as Ben Raskin, David and Christina’s father and Kathy’s husband
* Michelle DeFraites as Sarah Nathan
*
Patrick Johnson as Todd
*
Gary Grubbs as Dr. Lu
* Katie Garfield as Liv
Members of rock bands
Imagine Dragons
Imagine Dragons are an American pop rock band formed in 2008, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The band currently consists of lead singer Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, and bassist Ben McKee. They first gained exposure with the release of ...
and
Atlas Genius
Atlas Genius is an Australian alternative rock band formed in Adelaide, Australia in November 2009. The band's mainstay members are the Jeffery brothers, Keith on lead vocals and lead guitar; Michael on drums; and Darren Sell on keyboard. Their ...
appear briefly as themselves during the movie's Lollapalooza sequence.
Production
Principal photography
Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production.
Personnel
Besides the main film personnel, such as the ...
began in June 2013 in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States
Georgia may also refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
. Shortly before the film's release, it was discovered that the footage turned in to Paramount featured 2 seconds of a real-life plane crash.
Although sources differ on where the film clip was from, Paramount has said the footage is of a 2009 crash while the ''
Air Force Times
''Air Force Times'' is a newspaper published 26 times per year to provide active, reserve and retired United States Air Force and Air National Guard personnel and their families with news, information, analysis, community and lifestyle features, e ...
'' reported that footage was "nearly identical" to a
1994 incident that happened at
Fairchild Air Force Base, and two of the 1994 crash victim's families claimed that it was indeed the same footage.
[ Upon learning about this, producer Michael Bay publicly apologized stating that when he saw the footage he thought it was a special effect shot and asked Paramount to remove the footage from the film.][
]
Release
On February 5, 2014, Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...
postponed the release date from February 28, 2014, to an unknown date. Paramount partnered with MTV Films
MTV Entertainment Studios (formerly MTV Production Development from 2003 until 2018 and MTV Studios from 2018 until 2021) is an American film and television Film production, production and Film distribution, distribution company and is the film ...
on the marketing of the film. On March 24, 2014, THR's Borys Kit tweeted that the film had been re-titled from ''Welcome to Yesterday'' to ''Project Almanac''. The film was released on January 30, 2015.
''Project Almanac'' grossed $22.3 million in North America and $10.9 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $33.2 million, against a budget of $12 million.
The film earned $3.1 million in its opening day (including previews) which was far below industry’s estimate. The film made a total of $3.9 million in its second day and $1.4 million for its third day, bringing in a weekend gross of $8.5 million from 2,893 theaters, with a per-theatre average of $2,938 and finishing third at the box office.
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film has an approval rating of 38% based on 100 reviews with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "''Project Almanac'' isn't without wit or originality, but its thin story and irritating found-footage camerawork ultimately make it difficult to recommend." On Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a score of 47 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore
CinemaScore is an American market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts from the data.
Background
Ed Mintz, who ...
on opening day gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
John DeFore of ''The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...
'' in his review said that the film "begins as a marginally fun diversion before proving to have nearly no interest in the possibilities of its premise."
A. A. Dowd of ''The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was created in ...
'' gave the film a C+ and said, "As found-footage thrillers go, ''Project Almanac'' is perfectly watchable, but it never taps into the adolescent joy of its premise, the way ''Chronicle
A chronicle (, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events ...
'' did."
See also
* List of films featuring time loops
This list of films featuring time loop
The time loop or temporal loop is a plot device in fiction whereby Character (arts), characters re-experience a span of time which is repeated, sometimes more than once, with some hope of breaking out of ...
References
External links
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Project Almanac
2010s American films
2010s English-language films
2015 science fiction films
2015 films
2015 directorial debut films
American science fiction thriller films
American teen films
2010s films about time travel
Films directed by Dean Israelite
Films produced by Andrew Form
Films produced by Bradley Fuller
Films produced by Michael Bay
Films set in 2004
Films set in 2013
Films set in 2014
Films shot in Atlanta
Found footage films
MTV Films films
Paramount Pictures films
Platinum Dunes films
English-language science fiction films