Project X thrills and careens out of control

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Posted March 18, 2012 by HALIDON in EntertainME

Review Synopsis

Project X instils a lot of excitement and fervour in a neatly stitched reality-type fare, but which hopefully will not become a negative benchmark for young minds.

Opening credits

Project X thrills, careens out of control, giving you valuable insight of teen mob mentality.

Pulp

Thomas (Thomas Mann) is an average high school lad. He has protective rich parents, who also feel that he is a nobody. Their lack of confidence in their son has resulted in a boy who is not respected in the school, fails to match up to his peers expectation, has two buddies who are also constantly trying to be known in the ‘cool’ circle. Thomas wants to be seen as popular too but has no clue how to go about being one. His close friend Costa (Oliver Cooper) has a plan. For Thomas’ upcoming birthday, Costa wants to throw a party that will get everyone talking. He has roped in Dax (Dax Flame) to video the entire day and present it as a gift to Thomas.

Thomas’ parents are going out of town and leaving him in charge of their fancy house so that he can have the party there, with strict rules of course. They are not very confident of leaving him the house, but then they really want to ensure that he gets some freedom. This suits Costa’s plan as he has some serious plans to make this party work.

Source: http://wwws.warnerbros.co.uk

Despite Thomas’ reluctance, Costa has whipped up a frenzy in the school and neighbourhood. Unknown to Thomas till the party begins, Costa has uploaded the party and Thomas’ house address details all over the internet and social sites. He isn’t too sure if everyone will come, but since they are literally nobody’s in the school, he is taking his chances that the social noise he has drummed uo will ensure a decent crowd.

But the most the three care for is to ensure the attractive girls from their school turn up at the party. Well at least that is the plan. Thomas feels that this is not going to work and he is even more worried that he will look like a jerk the following week at school. Costa has secured the house, got two boys to be the bouncers, a DJ, sourced some drugs and alcohol for the party via a psychotic ex-army veteran, warned the neighbours of some extra noise for that night and has mentally prepped birthday boy Thomas and their other chubby buddy, JB (Jonathan Daniel Brown).

The people start to trickle. Soon it become a steady flow of guests as word spreads about the happening party at Thomas’ house. In a few hours, it becomes a deluge which soon becomes uncontrollable. By this time, the trio are so intoxicated that they have no idea what’s happening to party and how it will eventually end. All this while, Dax faithfully is still sober and recording all the excitement that eventually unfolds.

Do the three get the party they were hoping for? Do they finally join the league of happening talked about people at school? Project X opens up a whole new dimension which has to be seen to be believed.

End Roll

Project X is the temporary name given by the crew when they started filming. Eventually the name stuck as everyone felt it was the right name for this film. This film is also based on a true incident of the same nature in Australia.

Having said that, this is a an excellent piece of documentary-type, live action camera reporting style of film-making that is making its mark as a new genre of films. It was made famous with the The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. Even thought Project X is not a horror or scary movie, it needs the real-time feel of hand-held shaky images to provide a sense of realism and enhance the visual experience of the viewer to get completely immersed in the plot.

Using Dax as a camera guy to record the film offers a compelling rush to the film which would have surely been absent if it were standard direction. Fact is, almost the entire movie was shot with hand held devices such as mobile phone cameras, flip media etc.

This is the debut feature film for director Nima Nourizadeh who only has a documentary to his credit. He has managed to hold on to the plot till the very end quite successfully without losing us to boredom since we half expected the story after being warned in the trailers. The actors have done a good job playing their parts as genuinely as possible given that they are also almost newcomers to the industry.

Perspective
Make it your project to watch it if you haven’t. It is worth to see it if you are a teen, going to be one, or a parent to one. An eye-opener to a lot that can go wrong if not set right to begin with.

Rating:
MPAA Rating: Rated R for crude and sexual content throughout, drugs, drinking, pervasive language, reckless behaviour and mayhem – all involving teens.