12 Underrated Time Travel Movies You Need To See

Found footage meets a cautionary tale about the perils of time tampering in “Project Almanac,” the 2015 indie film from future “Power Rangers” director Dean Israelite. On the surface, this handheld sci-fi film has all the carefree energy you’d expect from a high school teen movie. However, much like Josh Trank’s dark superhero found-footage film, “Chronicle,” which arrived a few years earlier in 2012, the complexities posed by the film’s primary predicament give “Project Almanac” a darker edge.

Israelite introduces us to David (Jonny Weston), a high schooler who alongside a few friends, discovers that his late father was working on a time machine before he died. Using a set of secret blueprints to complete his dad’s work, David and his pals soon find themselves with the power of time travel in their young and irresponsible hands. It doesn’t take long for them to play around with this new ability — first to have fun and later, to fix some life problems that’ll realign their current timelines more favorably. No biggie, right?

Upon returning, the group discovers their actions in the past have had huge ramifications on their present, and by jumping back to fix things, they only end up making things worse. Buried under an influx of found-footage movies throughout the late noughties and early 2010s, the imperfect “Project Almanac” remains one of the more underrated indie takes on the genre.