The Butterfly Effect – Movie Review #RRSciFiMonth

This is a non-spoiler review of the movie – The Butterfly Effect movie, which was released in 2004.

The tagline of the movie says: “Change one thing. Change everything.”

I wanted to watch this movie for so long. I did watch some part of it with my cousin probably a decade or so back but I did not understand much that time. It has been on my wishlist for the longest time I guess. Last weekend, we decided to finally watch this movie.

As you can realize from the title of the movie, it is based on the Chaos theory or The butterfly effect in Physics which says this –

“It has been said something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world.”

and this is what the movie is based on. You change a small thing and everything else changes because of that. I guess going into this movie without knowing much makes it more enjoyable. So this is about Evan who as a kid has blackouts and he doesn’t remember anything that happened during those blackouts. His doctor makes him keep a journal with all the entries about these blackouts. As an adult, he is trying to understand why those blackouts happened. That is when he realizes that he can time travel and go back to those blackout moments and can actually change the events that occurred during those times. He tries to change the past which creates a ripple effect and changes the present dramatically. Trying to fix something in the past screws up the present even more.

I was reminded of “Harry Potter and cursed child”, but this movie is much better and darker. This movie will keep you on an edge as things get really bizarre as you see the frightening consequences of the small changes done in the past. A simple conversation can change the present completely. The butterfly effect of the changes was absolutely amazing. I think this is probably the best time travel movie I have seen. I should watch it again in order to make sense of all the small details in the movie.

There are some violent and adult scenes because of which this movie has been rated R. I think this is not a good movie to watch with kids around. This was my second movie with Ashton Kutcher in it. I had seen “Jobs” movie but I did not like it that much. But in this movie, he is really good. We watched the theatrical version this time. Next time I am planning to watch the director’s cut to see what extra scenes will be present. I have read some bad reviews for the second and third part of this movie so not sure if I want to watch them.

Finally, one word review for this movie: Brilliant.

Have you seen this movie? Did you like it?

Learn more about my other favorite sci-fi movies in this post: My Favorite Sci-Fi Movies

Other movie reviews:

• Moon (2009): Review
• District 9 of non-humans: Review