Editorials
‘Project Almanac’ Was ‘Back to the Future’ for the Found Footage Era
From absurd dashcam footage to amusing cat videos, it’s pretty safe to assume that the vast majority of real-world recordings are completely banal in nature – so why is it that Found Footage movies are almost exclusively associated with the horror genre? If you really think about it, we should have seen major Found Footage entries in pretty much every single genre by now, and yet filmmakers still insist on trying to make the next Blair Witch Project year after year.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for POV horror flicks, but I also enjoy a nice little palate cleanser every now and then. That’s why I appreciate rare exceptions like Dean Israelite’s Project Almanac, a sci-fi Found Footage romp that takes advantage of subjective filmmaking in an admirable attempt at updating age-old time travel tropes for a new generation.
If you haven’t heard of it before, Project Almanac tells the story of a group of teenagers involved in a time travelling conspiracy after David (Jonny Weston) uncovers blueprints for a time machine that his father (Gary Weeks) was working on before his mysterious death. Naturally, hormone-influenced shenanigans ensue as David and his friends decide to travel back in time for personal gain – only to discover that even the smallest changes can have disastrous consequences for the future.
Produced through Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes, Project Almanac was already an unusual endeavor coming out of the gate, being the production company’s second non-horror film after 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot. Not only that, but it was also a bit of a gamble in the financial department, with the film boasting a surprisingly large budget for a Found Footage flick despite not featuring any superpowered characters or city-destroying monsters.
While the movie would ultimately rake in nearly three times its budget at the box-office, this success didn’t extend to its critical reception. Several media outlets unfairly condemned the picture as a mediocre cash-grab meant to ride the coattails of the found footage films that inspired it, while others were even more critical of its murky time travel logic.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Time travel flicks may be a dime a dozen, but I guarantee that you’ve never seen one quite like this before. Sure, Project Almanac’s script touches on highly familiar ground as David attempts to rectify past mistakes only to make things infinitely worse in the future, but these tried-and-true tropes are made fresh again by the story’s singular perspective.
The film firmly plants viewers in the shoes of these relatable protagonists, and though it can be argued that the producers graduated from the Netflix school of casting obvious adults as teenagers, I personally thought that these characters were likable enough to make the experience worthwhile. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that David, Christina (Virginia Gardner), Jesse (Sofia Black-D’Elia) and the rest were way less irritating than characters from other similarly teen-focused found footage movies like Project X (even though that film benefited from a young Miles Teller).
Project Almanac is also a guaranteed treat for fans of Back to the Future, with the film boasting plenty of callbacks to Zemeckis’ iconic trilogy (with the film’s title itself referencing Biff’s time-travelling schemes from Part II) without necessarily recreating any of the same moments or even relying on its outdated ruleset for temporal distortion. While the script’s internal logic often doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny, as the story features a handful of poorly executed paradoxes, I don’t think that really matters when you’re having fun along the way – which is certainly the case here.
In fact, I think the film’s disproportionately poor reception can only be explained by a severe case of Found Footage fatigue, as most critics seemed to dismiss this genuinely entertaining thriller simply because it came hot on the heels of countless Paranormal Activity sequels and more successful FF experiments like Chronicle.
WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Project Almanac doesn’t feature any overt scares or even a foreboding atmosphere (I mean, most of the film takes place around high school parties and upbeat music festivals), but I’d argue that the film still features some exceptionally thrilling use of Found Footage simply because it does such a great establishing its characters that we actually end up fearing for their future.
It also helps that the movie features plenty of believable POV shots of global catastrophes, with some of this effects-driven imagery eerily bringing to mind real world tragedies. There are also a handful of moments where our protagonists are forced to confront the looming threat of complete non-existence due to their temporal meddling. These darker bits never quite take over the narrative, but the existential conundrum of collapsing timelines is taken a lot more seriously here than in Back to the Future.
Project Almanac doesn’t quite reinvent the time travel or the found footage wheel, relying on age-old tropes to tell its story and expecting an excessive amount of suspension of disbelief from the viewer (I’m still not too keen on the flick’s ultra-crisp big budget photography), but that doesn’t necessarily deem it a failure. For all its flaws, Israelite’s movie is still a highly enjoyable and unexpectedly humorous ride that deserves a larger fanbase among sci-fi and found footage enthusiasts. It may not be the best that the genre has to offer, but it doesn’t really have to be when there are so few of its kind out there.
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
Despite what the higher-ups at Marvel would have you believe, Stan Lee’s original vision for Spider-Man was very different from the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler that fans ultimately got.
It was comics maestro Steve Ditko that turned him into the lovable web-head that we all know and love, though even that first draft of the character wasn’t exactly meant to be a child-friendly mascot. Ditko envisioned an uncanny arachnid-human hybrid whose freakish poses and dark costume would strike terror into the hearts of criminals, with the inclusion of web-shooters possibly having been a suggestion by Ditko’s roommate at the time, renowned fetish artist and bondage enthusiast Eric Stanton.
These more adult-oriented origins may have changed over the years, but one could argue that Spidey never completely lost his darker side. In fact, we’d eventually see several grim storylines that explored the horrific consequences of Spider-Man’s radioactive blood. While having his irradiated body fluids give Mary Jane cancer is likely the most terrifying of these yarns (track down Spider-Man: Reign if you’re up for a depressing read that was at one point set to be adapted to film by Michael Jackson), one of the most memorable horror-adjacent moments in these comics has to be the acceleration of Peter Parker’s mutation and the eventual introduction of Man-Spider – a storyline that appears to have been one of the main inspirations behind the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
I sincerely doubt that Marvel Studios is really going to give their toy-selling juggernaut a Cronenbergian rebrand, but the most recent trailer for Brand New Day suggests that the creative team is pulling from some surprisingly spooky source material in this latest superhero sequel. Specifically, the trailer makes it seem like the film is set to be a loose adaptation of the Neogenic Nightmare arc from Spider-Man: The Animated Series, commonly known as the best exploration of Spidey’s radioactive dark side that also features the most iconic version of Man-Spider.
If you’re wondering what these influences could mean for the upcoming film, I’d like to invite you to join me as we look back on some of the animated series’ most horror-tinged episodes.
A fourteen-episode story arc that made up the show’s second season, Neogenic Nightmare began airing in September of 1995. At this point, the series had already earned a reputation as the definitive version of Spider-Man despite dealing with absurd levels of censorship and executive meddling. It’s widely known at this point that this incarnation of Spidey was prohibited from ever punching his villains, and the studio even insisted that realistic guns should be replaced with futuristic laser weapons in order to avoid enraging concerned parents.
And that’s not even mentioning bizarre demands like setting up Hobgoblin as the original Goblin villain simply because the folks responsible for the toy-line had already prepared the character’s merchandise before scripts were even written.
At the end of the day. the show’s success mostly came down to John Semper’s excellent writing, with the (mostly) faithful recreation of the Spider-Man’s core principals and a handful of iconic storylines (coupled with an excellent cast behind the scenes) elevating a what was intended to be a kid’s show promoting ToyBiz products.
Naturally, the rampant cartoon censorship of the 90s couldn’t keep Semper from wanting to explore darker themes from his own favorite Spider-Man comics, and that’s how his team came up with a season-long re-imagining of iconic arcs like the Six-Arm Saga, The Mutant Agenda and even the first appearance of the Sinister Six. These stories would be enhanced with additional “dark” characters like Blade, The Punisher and even Morbius (though the latter had to exchange his vampiric blood-drinking for bizarre plasma-absorbing powers in order to conform to network guidelines).
If you haven’t yet seen it, the complete Neogenic Nightmare arc follows Spider-Man as he discovers that his mutation is progressing beyond his initial superpowers and threatening to turn him into a more monstrous hybrid. After developing extra arms, Spidey goes so far as to request help from both the X-Men and several other super-heroes as he becomes embroiled in a criminal conspiracy involving a team-up between some of his most iconic villains. The arc eventually introduces us to the show’s version of Man-Spider, which is depicted here as the monstrous final stage of the process which began when Peter was first bitten by that radioactive spider.
Personally, I think this werewolf-like addition to Spidey’s genetic curse is the best incarnation of Man-Spider that we’ve ever seen. This is because the six-armed body horror of it all adds even more weight to Peter’s decision to keep helping others regardless of what his powers may cost him, with the creature’s final rampage even giving the supporting cast a chance to help Spider-Man for a change. While I don’t hate the Morbius movie as much as some other comic fans, it’s a shame that Sony relegated that story to a solo film instead of later incorporating it into the Man-Spider saga like Neogenic Nightmare did.
Season two of the animated series ended up being an even bigger hit than the first, with fans loving the show’s take on an expanded Marvel Universe (which even included the ’90s X-Men cast) as well as the darker take on a more monstrous Spider-Man. That’s why it makes sense that the MCU’s return to street-level comic adventures would harken back to this particular storyline – especially since it appears that the Disney wishes to use the upcoming film as an opportunity to shine a light on other Marvel characters just like Semper did back in the day.
From what we can see in the trailer, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man appears to be going through his own additional transformations, including creepy fully black eyes and organic web-shooter, as well as the cocoon-building behavior previously seen in Marvel’s The Other arc in the comics. As I mentioned before, I doubt that the MCU will allow this particular cash cow to fully transform into a nightmarish spider freak that can scare away children, but there’s always a chance that the studio could surprise us with more horror elements. I’d also love to see the story explore Spidey’s mutation and use that as an excuse to formally introduce X-Men’s mutants into the MCU, especially since Sadie Sink is rumored to be playing Jean Grey in the flick.
However, even if Brand New Day doesn’t adapt as much of the Neogenic Nightmare as the promotional material has suggested, I’d argue that this particular season of Spider-Man: The Animated Series is still worth revisiting simply because it’s a great example of artists being able to work past network limitations in order to tell complex stories that approach full-on body-horror.
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