The worst kind of film

Rating: 1/10 (16 May 2008)

The Butterfly Effect is a special example of the very worst kind of film. If it had merely been dull or boring it would have just been another bad film that simply vanished over time. If only.
The Butterfly Effect is so mind-twistingly stupid, so incomprehensibly brainless that it can sometimes manage to trick you into thinking it's clever. It's what people do when they're not intelligent enough to make a consistent, engaging story. They take a concept, string a bunch of bizarre and confusing scenes together and end it with some asinine "twist" in an attempt to stun the audience so they don't notice that nothing makes any sense.
The film endlessly contradicts itself, thinking it's getting ever more thrilling when really it's just digging itself a deeper hole. It doesn't even adhere to it's own rules or logic, and in a film that is supposed to be about the nature of cause and effect, it's only real obligation is to be consistent to itself. Sadly, this is all too hard for the makers of The Butterfly Effect.
The concept of a magic diary that sends you back in time is a hard thing to sell at the best of times, but when you give up trying to sell it altogether and try and pass it off as 'surreal' or 'abstract' then you're just adding insult to injury.