It is a story of some teenagers who built a time machine and before you and they know it, things escalate pretty quickly. Even before you enter the dizziness of the camera’s footage, you know that these kids will live a teenage fantasy from every perspective.
Our protagonist, David is a very intelligent teenager trying to be accepted by MIT university. So, he develops awesome projects. However, both he and the rest of his friends are, lets just say, not that popular in school. Well… not only I did not go to MIT but I was way goofier in high school. But hey… Just pointing out some things. Both David and his sister lived at least a decade in that house but never heard a loud locking noise. This way they found out about the time-machine. Also these kids needed a power supply and they really filmed their own robbery with a handheld camera stealing some stuff from their school.
A small reference to the paradox of the movie. The paradox of time travel in this situation is that if there was no time machine he could not go back and destroy the time machine. Some theories suggest that time is self-healing, which would prevent actions from happening in order to keep balance of other events. This is mostly true to a “single-timeline” universe like Project Almanac.
In the end there are smart moves throughout the movie like getting an old VIP pass after an event for cheap and then go back in time to use it. Also visually and psychologically, the movie treats the viewer respectfully. The protagonist even not with an average intelligence by any means, can be correlated. Most of the scenes are carefully executed so most of the action is filmed by their camera. And finally both pleasant jokes, funny scenes and drama are balanced well.
If you can stand the unstable camera during the whole duration of the movie, then honestly it is a nice time-travel theme and a great teenage perspective. Maybe for some, the cons out-weight the pros but it is an original movie at least.
Favourite quotes:
“Quinn: We have to go back and do it again! Adam: I am not winning the lottery twice!”
“Quinn: You see, I was either going to buy one of these, or 17 Toyota Corollas.”
“Adam: I’m not gonna go and play God with you guys.”