Director: Nima Nourizadeh
Cast: Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, Jonathan Daniel Brown
Certificate: 15
Trailer

Every now and then a film comes along that is so devoid of redeeming features that you get the urge to bore a drill into the side of your own head to make it go away. Project X, a film about three boys throwing a house party with the sole aim of sleeping with lots of hot girls, is one of them. It's not just bad. It's willfully appalling on almost every level. It can't even get its found footage gimmick right.

Thomas (Mann) is 17. He's a geek, a loser - and that's just according to his parents. So his friends Costa (Cooper) and J.B. (Brown) plan the house party to end all house parties. Between the swimming pool, the DJs and the flamethrowers, things get a little out of hand.

"I'm sorry man! I just wanted to get some pussy!" confesses Costa, just in case we hadn't worked out his character's motivations yet. Unlike the camcorder-wielding kids in Chronicle or Cloverfield, there's simply nothing to like about any of these people. They're immature, bullying cardboard cut-outs of human beings that we're meant to like because one of them can operate a video camera. And point it at girls' tits. It makes The Hangover: Part II seem like a seminal work of feminist literature.

Even the camerawork is inconsistent. Capturing full conversations in crisp, perfect audio, music video helmer Nima Nourizadeh magically cuts between people mid-speech to get reaction shots without interrupting the dialogue. Then he constructs a montage of increasingly aimless stunts, all set to uninterrupted background music. The party looks good, yes, but it looks too good. Nima sticks a message before the film saying it's been edited together by filmmakers. That still doesn't explain how the videocamera works in the swimming pool.

The wasted teenagers soon spill out into the street, vandalising stuff and assaulting the neighbours. It is, admittedly, spectular how out of control things become. But not in a good way. Because the characters are so abhorrent, even the sight of a drunk dog in a bouncy castle can't raise laughs. Then, just when you think things can't sink any lower, up pops a midget who punches people in the balls (midgets, LOL).

Kids (and even parents) run about saying things like "epic" and "awesome". Project X is neither of these. It's 88 minutes of meaningless noise. You just wish an alien invasion would turn up halfway through and blow them all to smithereens.