intriguing time-bending thriller

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2004)

Have you ever wondered how differently your life might have turned out had you taken a left turn instead of a right on the day of that fateful accident, or chosen a different college or career path, or not gone to that dance the night you met your one true love? All of us have played this `what if' game at some point in our lives, speculating about where we might be, whom we might know and what we might be doing now if even a single event in our past had played out differently. And how many of us would be willing to return to a key moment in our past if we knew that, by doing something different, we could forever alter the path our life ended up taking? And what if we discovered that by undoing that event we ended up altering our lives and the lives of those around us in ways we never expected? Would we still want to do it?
This is the premise for `The Butterfly Effect,' an effectively creepy supernatural thriller that boasts a star-making performance by Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher plays Evan Treborn, a young man in college who, since his childhood, has been suffering inexplicable blackouts at key traumatic moments in his life. And traumatic his life has been! His father is consigned to a mental institution, suffering from an ailment that may have been passed on to his son. In addition, Evan is friends with a young girl, Kayley, whose father sexually abuses not only her but Evan as well. Kayley also has a sadistic little brother named Lenny, who inspires Evan, Kayley and a neighbor friend of theirs to perform malicious pranks and even sets Evan's dog on fire. Now that he's in college, Evan discovers he has the power to transport himself back in time to many of these key moments in his life in an attempt to rewrite history and undo the mental and psychological damage they've caused. The trouble is that Evan finds out that changing the course of history often brings a whole host of other unforeseen and unanticipated problems right along with it.
Directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber have fashioned a complex, intricate screenplay filled with plot twists that continually alter the plane of the film's reality. The story hurtles us back and forth in time, showing us what was, what is and then what might have been without a moment's confusion, all the while making us question whether Evan isn't simply insane after all. There are a few, perhaps inevitable, plot holes, the most glaring of which is why Evan is unable to find out how a prank he and his friends committed in their childhood turned tragically wrong (Evan blacked out during the event). Considering the fact that the tragedy was one that became common knowledge in the small town in which Evan lived, it is highly implausible that he would have to wait till his early Â‘20's before he finally found out what had happened. In addition, one might question the propriety of using a topic as sensitive as pedophilia for a supernatural thriller. Still, those are minor quibbles for a story that works remarkably well at keeping itself credible and focused despite the inherent absurdity at its core.
Kutcher does an effective job carrying the film. By not being too handsome or too heroic, Kutcher keeps Evan life-sized and interesting. We're willing to follow him through this elaborate labyrinth because we can identify with the truths of his character. He's a young man who genuinely wants to make things better for the people he cares for, yet the mental anguish he is going through as he attempts to piece together some semblance of comprehensible reality from the jumbled fragments of his life comes through loud and clear.
`The Butterfly Effect' is not your usual mind-numbing, schlock thriller. It has intelligence and style and a very intriguing storyline. It will probably get you rewinding some of those key events in your own life, wondering might have been.