Project Almanac
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''Project Almanac'' is a 2015 American found footage science fiction film 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'', the 2017 reboot of ''Power Rangers'', and the 2019 reboot of ''Are You Afraid o ...
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 film makers 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 Jonny Weston (born June 16, 1988) is an American actor. He starred as real-life surfer Jay Moriarity in the 2012 film ''Chasing Mavericks'' and as brainy high school student David Raskin in the 2015 time-travel adventure ''Project Almanac''. He ...
,
Sofia Black-D'Elia Sofia Black-D'Elia (born December 24, 1991) is an American actress. She is known for her television roles, such as Tea Marvelli in ''Skins (North American TV series), Skins'', Sage Spence in ''Gossip Girl'', Andrea Cornish in ''The Night Of'', a ...
,
Sam Lerner Samuel Bryce Lerner (born September 27, 1992) is an American actor, who is most known for his role as Geoff Schwartz on '' The Goldbergs'', Chowder in '' Monster House'', and as Quinn Goldberg in ''Project Almanac''. Career Lerner appeared in ...
, Allen Evangelista,
Virginia Gardner Virginia Elizabeth Gardner is an American actress who played Karolina Dean in the Hulu original series ''Runaways (TV series), Marvel's Runaways'' (2017–2019), Vicky in David Gordon Green's horror film ''Halloween (2018 film), Halloween'' (2018 ...
and Amy Landecker. 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 land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
, 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 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 concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a ...
device that Ben was developing for a government agency called "Project Almanac," 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 electric car battery 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 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 Jonny Weston (born June 16, 1988) is an American actor. He starred as real-life surfer Jay Moriarity in the 2012 film ''Chasing Mavericks'' and as brainy high school student David Raskin in the 2015 time-travel adventure ''Project Almanac''. He ...
as David Raskin, Christina’s brother, and best friend to Adam and Quinn *
Sofia Black-D'Elia Sofia Black-D'Elia (born December 24, 1991) is an American actress. She is known for her television roles, such as Tea Marvelli in ''Skins (North American TV series), Skins'', Sage Spence in ''Gossip Girl'', Andrea Cornish in ''The Night Of'', a ...
as Jessie Pierce, David’s longtime crush *
Sam Lerner Samuel Bryce Lerner (born September 27, 1992) is an American actor, who is most known for his role as Geoff Schwartz on '' The Goldbergs'', Chowder in '' Monster House'', and as Quinn Goldberg in ''Project Almanac''. Career Lerner appeared in ...
as Quinn Goldberg, best friend to Adam and David * Allen Evangelista as Adam Lee, best friend to Quinn and David *
Virginia Gardner Virginia Elizabeth Gardner is an American actress who played Karolina Dean in the Hulu original series ''Runaways (TV series), Marvel's Runaways'' (2017–2019), Vicky in David Gordon Green's horror film ''Halloween (2018 film), Halloween'' (2018 ...
as Christina Raskin, David’s sister * Amy Landecker as Kathy Raskin, David and Christina’s mother and Ben's wife *
Gary Weeks Gary Weeks (born June 4, 1972) 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 in a U.S. airbase. He was raised in Georgia, ...
as Ben Raskin, David and Christina’s father and Kathy’s husband * Michelle DeFraites as Sarah Nathan * Patrick Johnson as Todd *
Gary Grubbs Gary Grubbs (born November 14, 1949) is an American character actor who has appeared in 178 credited shows and films since the 1970s and is still working steadily. He is best known as Captain Steven Wiecek in '' For Love and Honor'' (1983-1984) ...
as Dr. Lu * Katie Garfield as Liv Members of rock bands Imagine Dragons and
Atlas Genius Atlas Genius are an alternative rock band formed in Adelaide, South 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 debu ...
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 a ...
began in June 2013 in
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
,
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...
. 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 postponed the release date from February 28, 2014, to an unknown date. Paramount partnered with
MTV Films MTV Entertainment Studios is the film and television production arm of MTV Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Founded in 1991 as MTV Productions, it is a consolidation of the former MTV ...
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-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, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an approval rating of 37% based on 98 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 a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, the film has a score of 47 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore 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 Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...
'' 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 American 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 cre ...
'' 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'' did."


See also

*
List of films featuring time loops This list of films featuring time loops where characters experience the same period of time which is repeatedly resetting: when a certain condition is met, such as a death of a character or a clock reaches a certain time, the loop starts again, w ...


References


External links

* * * * * *
Interview with Allen Evangelista
{{DEFAULTSORT:Project Almanac 2010s American films 2010s English-language films 2015 science fiction films 2015 comedy films 2015 films 2015 directorial debut films American science fiction thriller films American teen films Columbia Pictures films 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 2014 Films shot in Atlanta Found footage films MTV Films films Paramount Pictures films Platinum Dunes films