Project Almanac

{{Infobox film | name = Project Almanac | image = Project Almanac poster.jpg | alt = | caption = Theatrical release poster | director = Dean Israelite | producer = | writer = | starring = | cinematography = Matthew J. Lloyd | editing = | studio = | distributor = | released = | runtime = 106 minutes | country = United States | language = English | budget = $12 million | gross = $33.2 million<ref name="mojo">{{cite web |url= https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=almanac.htm |title=Project Almanac (2015) |publisher=IMDb |work=Box Office Mojo |access-date=November 28, 2015}}</ref> }}Project Almanac''' is a 2015 American found footage science fiction film directed by Dean Israelite in his directorial debut, and written by Jason Harry Pagan and Andrew Deutschman. The film stars Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D'Elia, Sam Lerner, Allen Evangelista, Virginia Gardner and Amy Landecker. The film tells the story of a group of high school students who build a time machine. Filmed in 2013 and originally planned for an early 2014 release, the release date was later moved to January 30, 2015. Upon release, Project Almanac received generally mixed reviews from critics and audiences, and grossed $33 million against a production budget of $12 million. Plot High school senior and aspiring inventor David Raskin is admitted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but is unable to afford its exorbitant tuition. Upon learning his mother, Kathy, will be forced to sell the family's house, David enlists his sister Christina and his friends Adam Lee and Quinn Goldberg to search through the belongings of his father Ben, an inventor who died on David's seventh birthday, in the hopes of finding something David can use to get a scholarship, filming themselves all the while. He finds an old camera with a video recording of his seventh birthday party, in which he briefly spots himself (at his current age) in a reflection. Noting how he appears to be reaching for a basement light switch in the reflection, David and his friends enter the basement, which his father had forbidden. The group pull the switch, activate a trapdoor, and find blueprints for a time travel device that Ben was developing for a government agency called "Project Almanac," which allows them to build a functional time machine.