“Project Almanac” is yet another “found footage” movie with a bunch of teens and one defining supernatural element. In this case, a group of high school students discover and construct a portable time machine.

Regardless of how worn out the “found footage” style is, I think it can still be made to work with strong writing and direction. Unfortunately for “Project Almanac,” neither of those things were the case. The film gains nothing creatively by its use of “found footage” cinematography and, conversely, it risks alienating a large portion of potential ticket buyers who have grown weary of this tired concept.

Here’s my rule with time travel in movies – there will be plot holes, there just will be. To overcome them, a movie involving time travel either needs to be thematically lighthearted (the “Back to the Future” trilogy, for example) or scientifically sparse enough (the “Terminator” movies come to mind) to provide a bridge for audiences to overcome those troublesome plot holes. “Project Almanac” is light on the lightheartedness and tries to be heavy on the science and suffers for it.

What’s more, this is a movie populated by high school students smart enough to construct a working time machine but stupid enough to break just about every rule of Time Travel 101. Furthermore, this is a time travel movie that has high school students traveling not to the old west or the far future, but to an earlier day in high school. “Project Almanac” expends a lot of energy to show audiences a fantasy of unexciting high school hallways.

Explaining is for documentaries (which is exactly what “found footage” tries to emulate) and storytelling is for movies. Coupling a difficult concept with idiot teenage characters, and an overused, under-original filming style results in an amalgamation that spends its precious run time trying to explain itself rather than telling its story.

3 of 6 stars