The Butterfly Effect

4.00
    The Butterfly Effect
    2004

    Synopsis

    A young man struggles to access sublimated childhood memories. He finds a technique that allows him to travel back into the past, to occupy his childhood body and change history. However, he soon finds that every change he makes has unexpected consequences.

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    Cast

    • Ashton KutcherEvan Treborn
    • Amy SmartKayleigh Miller
    • Melora WaltersAndrea Treborn
    • Elden HensonLenny Kagan
    • William Lee ScottTommy Miller
    • Eric StoltzGeorge Miller
    • Ethan SupleeThumper
    • Logan LermanEvan Treborn age 7
    • John Patrick AmedoriEvan Treborn age 13
    • Irina GorovaiaKayleigh age 13

    Recommendations

    • 75

      ReelViews

      The ending is weak, and may be the result of the filmmakers writing themselves into a corner and not wanting to conclude things in a burst of nihilistic excess. Yet, even though it's a cheat, it retains a degree of resonance.
    • 60

      Film Threat

      A terrific story, years in the making, that clearly stays true to the uncompromising vision of its creators. The results are on the screen.
    • 60

      Dallas Observer

      As a thriller, The Butterfly Effect is iffy and uneven, but as a portrait of a people, it's effective and intriguing.
    • 50

      The Hollywood Reporter

      An entertaining piece of supernatural nonsense whose sheer audacity disarms all (well, nearly all) skepticism.
    • 30

      Variety

      This overwrought and egregiously self-serious thriller about the poisonous fruit borne of child abuse grows more ridiculous by the quarter-hour and is poised for a theatrical life span scarcely longer than that of its eponymous insect.
    • 30

      Village Voice

      You have to, if not love, at least not mind a movie in which the very act of Ashton Kutcher reading is enough of a cosmic trauma to rip a hole in the fabric of space-time.
    • 20

      The A.V. Club

      A bad-movie-lover's heaven, and a good-movie-lover's hell.
    • 20

      L.A. Weekly

      An undercooked allusion to chaos theory -- gives every appearance of having been conceived, planned and executed out of a high school locker room.

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