Project Almanac review: A complete waste of time travel

If I had a time machine, I'd travel back to 1998 and persuade the makers of The Blair Witch Project to become bankers, bakers, actuaries or anything that didn't involve popularisation of the "found footage" technique. Back then, the creative faking of home video offered low-budget film-makers a way to excuse the rough edges on their images. A decade and a half later, we find ourselves wondering why Platinum Dunes, effusion of demonic billionaire Michael Bay, feels the need to present its teen time travel film in the medium. This is just irritating.

There's a decent rip-off of Looper (referenced in the dialogue) and Primer (conspicuously ignored) lurking within this debut feature from young Dean Israelite. David Raskin (Jonny Weston), a handsome physics enthusiast who hopes to attend MIT, happens upon an old video camera in the attic of his family home. He and his sister blub as they watch footage of their late father 10 years ago. But what's this? An image in the mirror appears to show the grown David attending his own seventh birthday party. (If you're already lost this film is not for you.) Later they discover a secret compartment within which dad has hidden the makings of a time machine. Don't ask? Just keep watching. By comparison, the science in Hot Tub Time Machine seems devised by Richard Feynman.

You can probably guess the structure. Initially, Dave and his pals use the machine for fun and personal gain. They get the lottery numbers. They retake tests in school. They attend a horrible Lollapalooza event. Those sorts of things. Then, far too late in the picture, the butterfly effects begin disrupting the universe and they have to try and ram shut Pandora’s Box.

There are some perfectly good jokes here and the final convulsions – though contradictory in their timelines – kick up a bit of engaging chaos. But the found footage business kills the action stone dead. You won’t care who edited the footage together. You won’t wonder why they keep filming when death looms. Make it stop.