You never know what's going to happen next

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2011)

The Butterfly Effect is an unusually good movie; it's exciting, emotional, unpredictable and it is definitely the saddest movie I've ever seen (and I saw the English Patient and Closer....).
The first time I heard about the story I knew I would love it. A young college student, Evan (Ashton Kutcher) who used to have blackouts during his childhood starts reading one of his old diaries. What a coincidence; he opens his diary at a half-blank page where he had a blackout and a flashback starts and he immediately finds himself in that lost memory. A few dramatic scenes later he discovers that throughout these flashbacks he can change the past. What he doesn't realize at first is if you change the past, you change everything with it. So he is basically given the power to shape his past the way he wants to and the films is about how he lives with this chance.
I liked the story because I was never quite able to what would happen next. There were so many turning points it held my attention throughout the entire movie. Furthermore, the screenwriters seemed to be able to create a story that contains both dramatic and exciting scenes. The whole story also had an anxious atmosphere. You could feel during the whole movie that something bad was going to happen, you just couldn't tell what was it going to be.
Fortunately this good screenplay is accompanied by the great performances the actors/actresses do. Ashton Kutcher really played his part well, he could show us all those mood swings and emotions. John Patrick Amedori (teenage Evan) also showed us what he can do. Maybe it's just because of the screenplay, but I think his scenes were the most touching of all.
As for the special effects the flashbacks were quite well-made, but that explosion (when Evan was a teenager) was truly ridiculous... I'm not saying that it ruined the whole movie, but they really should have tried to make a it a bit more realistic...
All in all, I think that The Butterfly Effect is a terrific film. It's typically the kind of movie that keeps you from sleeping at night by making you think...