Project Almanac (2014)
Clearly borrowing from the style of Chronicle, there were actually a few pretty cool moments in this found footage time travel film.
The time travel ideas are actually quite cool. The ending is sadly unoriginal and pretty much the inevitable finish to films like this. However, along the way there are some neat little touches.
Upon every jump into the past or future objects will float in the air spectacularly, which makes for a pretty neat visual cue whenever the time machine is activated. Meanwhile in a world where we could imagine someone selling their old backstage passes for a big festival on ebay, time travellers have some pretty awesome opportunities available to them.
My issue lies with the characters. Chronicle had to balance three quite distinct characters around which all other characters would revolve. While Project Almanac initially appears to do the same it's pretty clear that only one of them matters: the attractive one (whose missing dad is the source of the machine).
At a key point in the film where attractive geek rearranges time so he doesn't mess up things with the popular party girl who likes him. When she discovers that he manipulated time so they would be together she is rightly angry, but she's also insulted that he would think her fickle enough to dismiss their whole relationship in one key moment of flirting. It's the most realistic and interesting character interaction in the film because it rings true. At a music festival emotions can run high and people can stubbornly stick to decisions they make at such moments.
But unfortunately I don't like these characters and I get to know very little about any of them. However, they are at least recognisable as real people and so, feeling very much like an outsider to this cliquey group and not identifying with their situation that much, I'm still interested in finding out what happens.
I've heard complaints that you couldn't use an X-Box to provide the graphics display like that, but frankly that was one of the film's funnier moments.
Project Almanac is no Chronicle, but it's not bad at all. They've borrowed from Chronicle and done so in a way that works. Also the time travel logic fits together better than I was led to believe, even if the engineering elements are hokum.
B-