Project Almanac (2015) is an American sci-fi adventure film directed by Dean Israelite, written by Jason Harry Pagan and Andrew Deutschman, and starring Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D’Elia, Sam Lerner, Allen Evangelista, and Ginny Gardner. Originally planned for an early 2014 release, it was theatrically released in the United States on January 30, 2015, by Paramount Pictures, and in the Philippines on February 4, 2015, by Columbia Pictures.
Plot[]
In 2014, David Raskin, a 17-year-old high school senior and aspiring inventor, is accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but is unable to afford the tuition. As his mother Kathy contemplates selling their home, David, along with his sister Christina and friends Adam Lee and Quinn Goldberg, sift through his deceased father Ben's belongings in search of something to secure a scholarship. Ben, an inventor who died in a car crash on David's seventh birthday, left behind an intriguing video recording. In it, David sees his 17-year-old self reflected in a mirror. Captivated by this reflection reaching towards a basement light switch, they venture into Ben's forbidden basement workshop and uncover "Project Almanac," the blueprints for a time machine Ben was developing. They collect materials to build the device, and later, David, Christina, Adam, and Quinn, using a battery taken from Jessie Pierce's car—David's longtime crush—successfully send a toy model back in time. The test causes a neighborhood-wide power outage. Jessie finds out and decides to join their time-traveling experiments.
David, Jessie, Christina, Adam, and Quinn travel back in time to the previous day and sneak into Quinn's house. There, Quinn draws a smiley face on the neck of his sleeping past self, which also appears on the neck of the present Quinn. However, the sleeping Quinn wakes up, and seeing his future self, triggers a feedback loop that nearly erases both from existence. The group agrees to use the time machine for personal gain, provided they always do it together. Adam wins the lottery, Christina gets revenge on Sarah, her bully, and Quinn excels in a chemistry test, securing his academic future. They decide to go back to Lollapalooza three months prior. While partying, Christina and Adam become a couple. David, unsure about expressing his feelings for Jessie, leads to an awkward relationship. He travels back alone to alter this, resulting in a future where they are a couple. Kathy also gets a fabulous new job. Upon his return, he discovers their actions that caused the blackout, leading to Justin, the school's star basketball player being injured in an accident, which sets off a chain of disasters, including a plane crash with Sarah's father as the pilot. David goes back once more, prevents Justin's injury, and stops the plane crash. Returning to the present, he finds Adam critically injured in the hospital after an incident at the basketball game.
David continues his time-traveling attempts to fix past mistakes but is eventually discovered by Jessie, who accidentally travels back with him. Confronted by Jessie, David confesses to manipulating time to gain her love. As Jessie rebukes him, her past self appears, triggering a feedback loop that erases Jessie from existence. Resolved to prevent the creation of the time machine and its consequences, David finds the machine depleted of hydrogen. Upon returning to the present, he faces police suspicion over Jessie's disappearance. Dodging the ensuing manhunt, David secures a hydrogen canister at his school. He activates the time machine amid a police raid on the supply room, returning to 2004 on his seventh birthday. Unseen, he enters his home, mirroring the narrative's inception.
In the basement, David encounters his father, who recognizes him, signifying that David will complete Project Almanac. David warns Ben about the perils of time travel and advises him to bid farewell to his son. Consequently, David burns the blueprints and a crucial component, vanishing himself from the timeline. Nevertheless, the camera used by David and his friends remains, documenting everything. In the future, David and Christina sift through their father's possessions again, discovering both their father's camera and the alternate David's camera. The latter still holds all the footage from the original timeline, including them finding a single camera in the attic. Shocked, they review the footage, reliving their time-travel escapades. Later, at school, David reintroduces himself to Jessie, armed with foresight, and intimates to her that "this is gonna sound crazy, but I think we're about to change the world."
Cast[]
- Jonny Weston as David Raskin
- Sofia Black D'Elia as Jessie Pierce
- Sam Lerner as Quinn Goldberg
- Allen Evangelista as Adam Lee
- Virginia Gardner as Christina Raskin
- Amy Landecker as Kathy Raskin
- Gary Weeks as Ben Raskin
- Michelle DeFraites as Sarah Nathan
- Patrick Johnson as Todd
- Gary Grubbs as Dr. Lu
- Katie Garfield as Liv
Videos[]
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