The Butterfly Effect (Infinifilm Edition)

The Butterfly Effect (Infinifilm Edition) Review

Evan (Ashton Kutcher) is a young man who's blocked out specific events from his memory...events that not only traumatized Evan , but also traumatized two of his friends as well as the brother of one of those friends. Determined to get those memories back, Evan figures out a way to travel back in time to revisit those memories. However, what he uncovers is so disturbing that he now wants to change those events so the future can turn out better for both him and his friends.

But no matter how hard he tries, changing the past doesn't create the happy ending Evan is hoping for, which frustrates him. When he tries to save one person, another person ends up getting mentally and/or physically crippled ... and some even get killed. Soon, Evan becomes obsessed with trying to get the past right and starts losing his mind in the process.
It's only when he stops trying to control everything that he eventually sets everyone free....but it's also tragic in what he has to do to make that happen.

I'm used to seeing Ashton Kutcher play dopey roles in "That 70's Show" and "Dude, Where's my Car?", so I didn't know if Kutcher could pull off a serious role. He did surprisingly well. The supporting characters are also convincing in their roles, too. Evan's childhood male friend is especially chilling in the bedroom scene where we see how Evan's actions changed his future.

Just a word of warning, when it's revealed what really happened in Evan's childhood, it's pretty disturbing what's revealed. You don't actually see what happens in graphic detail (thank goodness), but it is implied so your imagination fills in the blanks.
Overall, I thought this was a compelling story. The beginning starts out mysteriously as you see a little boy go into these fugue states and you don't know why, but are curious to know why. It's also compelling to see if Evan can ever right what went wrong in his past.

The Butterfly Effect (Infinifilm Edition) Overview

A young man struggling to access sublimated childhood memories finds a technique that allows him to travel back to the past. Occupying his childhood body, he is able to change history. But every change he makes has unexpected consequences.

DVD Features:
Additional Scenes:included in the Director's Cut Version of the film
Alternate endings:included in the Director's Cut version of the film
Audio Commentary:with Director and Screenwriters Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber
DVD ROM Features:Script-to-Screen Link to original Website Exclusive On-disc ROM Content Exclusive content at infinifilm.com
Deleted Scenes:with commentary
Documentaries:--The Science and Psychology of the Chaos Theory --The History and Allure of Time Travel
Featurette:--The Creative Process --Visual Effects
Other:infinifilm Fact Track DIRECTOR'S CUT OF THE FILM--only on DVD (120 minutes) DTS ES 6.1 Sound
Storyboards
Theatrical Trailer

The Butterfly Effect (Infinifilm Edition) Specifications

Despite box-office dominance during its opening weekend, The Butterfly Effect is better suited to guilty-pleasure viewing at home. When writer-directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber (who penned Final Destination 2) aren't breaking their own haphazard rules of logic, they're filling this sordid thriller with enough unpleasantness to make eternal damnation seem like an attractive alternative. In a role-reversal from his That '70s Show persona, Ashton Kutcher plays a college-age psychology student who discovers, by re-reading his childhood journals, that he can revisit his past and alter traumatic events, hoping to improve their previously unfortunate outcomes. Instead, this foolhardy experiment in chaos theory (the titular "butterfly effect," popularized by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park) results in a variety of nightmarish permutations, each having dire consequences for him and/or his friends. This intriguing premise is explored with a few interesting twists and turns, but with subplots involving child pornography, animal cruelty, and profanely violent children, it's a stretch to call it entertainment. --Jeff Shannon

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Nov 05, 2010 19:46:04