Project Power (2020)
Directed by Ariel Schulman
An ex-soldier, a teen and a cop collide in New Orleans as they hunt for the source behind a dangerous new pill that grants users temporary superpowers.
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9 films that influenced Project Power
What critics say influenced Project Power
There’s no question that Project Power is borrowing from other movies, such as Bradley Cooper’s underrated Limitless and elements from the Marvel and DC Comics universe.
The idea drove the plot of both Limitless (2011), which featured NZT-48, an experimental brain-enhancing ‘smart’ pill and Luc Besson’s Lucy (2014) with CPH4, an atomic-powered formula which boosts the human brain capacity from 10% to 100%.
Project Power takes the Limitless concept and runs with it to glory.
I suppose their new film, “Project Power,” is an attempt to blend the relentless energy and pacing of “Nerve” with the cerebral context of “Limitless” and the result is a tired misstep that lacks any punch and desperately needs a drink of its own medicine.
Each time the drug gets popped, there are montages of dilating eyeballs and triggered synapses that crudely mimic the ones in “Requiem for a Dream,” and the whole this drug will make you amazing! concept feels like a lift from “Limitless,” the terrific 2011 dramatic thriller that established Bradley Cooper as an actor who could do more than strut through a “Hangover” movie.
The film is part "Limitless" and part "Lethal Weapon," with superpowers thrown in for good measure.
To that end, the notion of this screenwriter teaming up with Matt Reeves for “The Batman” could yield some excellent results, but “Project Power,” especially from these “Catfish” and “Paranormal Activity” filmmakers ultimately feels like a big let down— a captivating idea about the way the system preys on the disadvantaged and the constant exploitation and appropriation of black and brown voices, that fizzles out fast once the high of its concept wears off.
Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who made the third and fourth installments of the Paranormal Activity franchise, the kinetic energy running through the veins of Project Power keeps the movie pumping at a chaotic tempo.
I don't know if that's what inspired screenwriter Mattson Tomlin to write the spec script "Power," but co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (who together directed the third and fourth installments of the "Paranormal Activity" franchise along with the 2016 film "Nerve") have now brought that into existence in "Project Power."
Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman made their mark with the internet trolling movie “Catfish” and followed it up with entries in the surveillance camera-powered “Paranormal Activity” horror series.
Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (who helmed a couple of Paranormal Activity movies) seem fixated on boosting their movie’s horror cred with exploding viscera and more IPM (impalements per minute) than any film in recent memory, which just gets in the way of the storytelling, and isn’t even totally hilarious like it is in Deadpool .
Not that they’re particularly known for their restraint (they’re most famous for the documentary Catfish , but they also helmed Nerve and a couple of the Paranormal Activity sequels).
The tone and style of the film are akin to Josh Trank’s surprising 2012 sci-fi “Chronicle.”
You’ve got your X-Men references, your Captain America riffs, your Midnight Special parallels, and elements that are similar to last year’s as-yet-unreleased festival title Synchronic .
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El resultado se enmarca en ese subgénero de blockbuster que mezcla acción sobrehumana con pseudo ciencia (Lucy) y no llega a ser totalmente original, pero ya les habría gustado en la segunda temporada de Stranger Things o a alguna de Lobezno contar con la mitad de su ritmo.
The idea drove the plot of both Limitless (2011), which featured NZT-48, an experimental brain-enhancing ‘smart’ pill and Luc Besson’s Lucy (2014) with CPH4, an atomic-powered formula which boosts the human brain capacity from 10% to 100%.
Scripted by Mattson Tomlin, Project Power is as scientifically stupid as Lucy, but it doesn’t waste nearly as much time as that movie trying to explain itself.
But it's a lot smarter than the trailer and the opening scenes get across — and surprisingly fun, too, in the way that movies like Lucy and Limitless are fun: the kind of loony, kinetic thriller that knows it's all just shenanigans, and leans in.
Like its super-drugged predecessors Limitless and Lucy, the creative fireworks it promised in the trailer fizzles out over feature-length.
Think Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg in Captain Marvel or Ruby Rose’s Ares in John Wick: Chapter 2 .
The premise is promising (a drug gives you super powers for five minutes!), the actors are likeable and have dramatic chops (Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt!) and the directing team is attuned to the zeitgeist (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, Catfish , Nerve ).
Directing duo Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, leveling up from the documentary Catfish, a couple of Paranormal Activity sequels, and the underrated tech-thriller Nerve, do get to flex and stage some effective body horror.
Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman got their start with documentary hit Catfish, but they’ve since gone on to helm several mid-level genre efforts, including a couple Paranormal Activity sequels and the 2016 social-media thriller Nerve, which similarly squandered a promising premise about an app that rewarded people for committing crimes.
Coming off the heels of the stylistic and underrated thriller “Nerve,” I was eager to see what filmmakers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman would do next.
Project Power, which was written by Mattson Tomlin and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (of the Catfish doc, and more recently, Nerve), stakes out a spot on the gritty outskirts of the superhero genre, with blood and profanity and a character played by Machine Gun Kelly.
Since bursting onto the scene ten years ago with Catfish, directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman have found a groove directing genre movies of a particular flavor, including a couple Paranormal Activity flicks and enjoyably dumb Nerve .
With a plot that is denser than it needs to be, more characters than necessary, and enough backstories to fill an Al-Anon meeting, it’s no wonder the pacing drags (editor Jeff McEvoy, The Lincoln Lawyer ).
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Think Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg in Captain Marvel or Ruby Rose’s Ares in John Wick: Chapter 2 .