What do you call a movie that’s coming out in February? Anything you like, as long as you pick one title and stick to it. Seriously, two months from release date is kind of late to be changing around titles, and yet behold, a trailer for a movie called “Welcome to Yesterday,” which, as I type, continues to be known on IMDB as “Almanac.” On the other hand, “Welcome to Yesterday” is definitely a punchier title (though I’m having trouble keeping it separate in my head from this year’s “Escape from Tomorrow,” to which it sounds like a prequel), and probably a more informative one: for “Welcome to Yesterday” is a movie about time travel.
Anyway, here’s the trailer, which sets up the premise—teens discover a time-travel machine, use it to make their lives totally awesome, realize they’re messing with the fabric of reality itself, try to use it to fix things—as well as the style, which is our old friend found footage. Indeed, the trailer features people video-taping themselves watching a video-tape. It’s meta, man. Basically, the vibe here is “Chronicle” with time travel, and a slightly lighter feel from first-time director Dean Israelite and a bunch of young, more or less unknown actors.
The reason it’s getting a release, though, is right there in the trailer where Israelite’s name isn’t: producer Michael Bay, taking time out from his busy schedule of smashing giant robots into each other while shaking the camera, in order to give a younger director a chance to shake his very own camera (hey, at least found footage constitutes an actual reason for shaky cam). Bay’s name is cause for pause most of the time, but “Welcome to Yesterday” looks like it might at least be an interesting debut for a new name. We’ll all find out on February 28th.