Better than you may expect.

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2009)

The Butterfly Effect starts as seven year old Evan (Logan Lerman) suffers from strange black-outs just like his institutionalised father Jason (Callum Keith Rennie), his friend Kayleigh's (Sarah Widdows) father forces the two to engage in a paedophile video & he abuses both Kayleigh & her brother Tommy. Six years later & the three decide to play a prank on a woman by making Lenny put some dynamite in a mail box, unfortunately the prank goes terribly wrong & a woman & her baby daughter dies in the explosion. Things go from bad to worse as guilt tears the four friends apart, eventually Evan & his mom leave the area. Seven years later & Evan (Ashton Kutcher) goes to college & is studying human memory & uses his own experiences to aid him, while reading from one of his childhood journals Evan travels back in time to relive the point during which he had a black-out & discovers that he is able to change the future. However while trying to create the perfect future for himself & his friends he only succeeds in making things worse...
Written & directed by Eric Bress & J. Mackye Gruber this is an odd little film that sort of defies explanation or any attempt to pigeon hole it as it's unlike any other film I have seen or heard about. Originally released as a 110 minute film a 'Director's Cut' was subsequently released on home video which is longer & most notably changes the ending, while I will be basing my comment on the theatrical version I have actually seen the alternate ending & although slightly darker in tone & not as 'happy' I don't think it makes a massive difference & could come across as a bit silly too with an unborn foetus committing suicide a bit much. Anyway, the film is a surprising mix of sci-fi, drama, romance & thriller with heavy emphasis on the drama. You could say that The Butterfly Effect is a darker variation on the romantic time travel/alternate time-line comedy Sliding Doors (1998) but with a much more gritty & downbeat tone as every successive attempt Evan makes to try & change the future for the better makes thing worse for himself &/or his friends. The film is a little slow going at places & the changing time-line plot gets a bit old by the fourth or fifth time it's used, in the end though I suppose the point that The Butterfly Effect is trying to make & the one which Evan finally realises is that once you change something you can never go back to the way things were before & in a nutshell that's what the film is about. The ending is also quite poignant as Evan realise the problem isn't anyone or anything else, it's himself & the only way to rectify things is to distance himself from everyone he has ever cared for & it's these dramatic revelations that the film with either sink or swim for you, if you find the plot compelling & the character's engaging then there's a fair chance you will enjoy this.
Not much, if any, explanation is given to the actual time travel process here which may be an issue for some but the plot & character's are both strong enough in my opinion to sustain ones attention. The butterfly effect itself obviously is a reference to the chaos theory & that the flap of a butterfly's wings on one side of the world can cause a hurricane on the other. More of a drama with sci-fi elements there no real effects scenes or anything that violent. The film playing at the cinema is Se7en (1995) & the odd clip is seen.
With a supposed budget of about $13,000,000 this was shot in Canada this was one of the most read unproduced scripts doing the rounds in Hollywood & it took the presence of Kutcher to get the thing made. The acting is alright but nothing special & this is the type of film where it needs to be great & not just alright.
The Butterfly Effect requires you to put some effort in watching it & while it can come across as a somewhat dull drama at times there's enough going on to warrant a watch. Followed by The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006) & The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations (2009).