Rent Project Almanac (2015)

Project Almanac review by George Hooper - Cinema Paradiso

Also known as Project Almanac, Welcome to Yesterday is a film that much like Primer, X-Men: Days of Future Past and even Mr Peabody and Sherman deals with trips to the past but instead of the outcome being the most important part its the metaphor heavy, cliched plot that you take away from this little excursion, not a sense of wonder or dread but a sense of people knowing better than the people presented.

Welcome to Yesterday follows a group of friends who watch a video showing them that time travel exists and that they are going to use it. They promptly find a set of blueprints that show them how to travel through time using a machine. When they build it and test it they find ways to avoid past mistakes, fix relationship problems but once they start taking advantage of it the whole situation gets completely out of hand.

While the central premise has worked well for others, in the hands of director Dean Isrealite, Welcome to Yesterday becomes a mixture of tired cliches, forced tension and even more forced emotion. The whole feature revolves around character too stupid to see the final act coming, something you can witness in other equally twisty but better films. The film never attempts to try new things instead settling for characters that have only just gone through puberty instead.

The film is just an excuse for childish behavior wrapped up in a neat little bow like that will suddenly make it science fiction. Israelite understands the concept of time travel but not what makes it cool and certainly not what makes it exciting, that he hasn’t even begun to figure out. The end result is a mixture of problems but most of all it is filled with a cast of actors filled with potential with nowhere to put it to use, the film ends up a shocking waste of effort.