Project Almanac (2014)

While Project Almanac lacks the cleanness, coherence and atmosphere of Timecrimes, it at least has a bit of fun. Is it successful in at least that aspect? That’s a question I’m still unsure of the answer to.
There are problems in this movie inherent to the major generic elements - not only is it a time travel movie, it’s also a found footage movie. On top of that, it’s about teenagers. From there, you should be able to work out whether or not this movie would be your cup of tea. 
The first person footage is often unjustified or inconsistent (how is the video camera picking up audio of a quiet conversation metres away at a goddamn music festival?; about twenty minutes into the movie, a character finally says that from then on, they should record everything - so what was the beginning stuff?) and at times made me feel dizzy in real life. The time travel was atrocious. Even within the rules established in universe, it seemed to disregard logic at will, especially towards the end. The things they use time travel for are increasingly ridiculous, and a key plot point hinges on really gross manipulation of a female character. You might have noticed my sensitivity to the gross mishandling of female characters - this movie set me off. Strangely, the characters were generally surprisingly decent and had fairly good chemistry for a high school movie. In spite of all looking well and truly too old, they felt like friends and it was the kind of generic teenage shit that made sense in context until the time travel became the bulk of the plot. It did take a surprising amount of time to actually get into the plot: the pacing of the movie was really odd, and despite being the major conflict, didn’t actually gear up for ages.
If you plan on watching this movie, maybe also plan on taking a seasickness pill.
Rating: 4/10 - Once the reason for the camera was established and I stopped feeling motion sick, I actually had fun with this. As much fun as I could have while constantly wanting to pause it to pull apart the internal logic.

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