Butterfly Effect Movie Review

Movie Review of The Butterfly Effect

It’s not everyday that one may watch a film that can be categorized in all of the genres of drama, thriller, sci-fi, and love. However, in J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress’s movie, The Butterfly Effect, they do just that. Throughout the film, a young man, Evan Treborn, played by Ashton Kutcher, who like his institutionalized dad before him, has memory blackouts that he must deal with. After several years had passed, Evan discovers a supernatural technique to alter his entire life and find his vanished and harrowing memories. Unfortunately, in order to relive these moments and recollections in his past, there are critical and severe consequences.

To begin, Evan is born and raised in a small town with his hard- working, single mom. He begins to develop a strong friendship with the fellow neighborhood kids and continuously seems to find himself in some kind of trouble or mischief . On top of it all, Evan suffers from these harsh blackouts, finding himself in a whole other place. After these instances, he has no recollection of the occurrences, and thus, wakes up very confused. Needless to say, neither his friends nor family played by Amy Smart and Eric Stoltz truly believe that these incidents are honestly happening. They figure it is his way of covering up and attempting to stay out of trouble. Ironically enough, Evan‘s dearest friend, Kayliegh (Amy Smart) begins to grow depressed and violent after all of these situations that Evan has no control over. He yearns to help his friends, but it’s impossible when he can’t even remember these specific harrowing memories. As the years pass, he continues to have less and less black outs and eventually, they become a dark part of his past.

However, Evan devises a technique of traveling back in time to inhabit his childhood body and eventually causes irreparable damage. Evan keeps copious notes in a journal about everything he’s gone through before and after the incidents. He races back and forth throughout his own life, procuring his notebooks and re-reading them to hopefully fix things. After an eventful and oft tragic childhood, Evan starts looking for answers and becomes a college psyche major. In his attempts to work through his blackout illness, he discovers...

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...impossible to find myself anywhere but sitting on the edge of my seat. It was difficult to predict what would come next, constant suspense was all around. Thus, making the situations portrayed more interesting and entertaining to the viewer of the film.

However, due to Evan’s relapses to his past, The Butterfly Effect possessed several different story lines. I thought that the idea for this film was fantastic. However, the only problem I saw was that the concepts that were formed were poorly expressed. I was confused throughout the film on whether Evan had these blackouts because he is going back in time to cause them, or if he was going back in time because he had these blackouts. I considered why these blackouts happen at those particular times. Needless to say, the story lines seemed to flow well together and by the end of The Butterfly Effect I thought it was worthy of note and an enjoyable film.

Works Cited

The Butterfly Effect. Dir. J. Mackye. Perf. Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, and Eric Stoltz.

DVD medium. 20th Century Fox.