The Butterfly Effect

The overbearingly hyperactive Ashton Kutcher, pretty much a household name now thanks to his Anna-Nicole-Smith-esque relationship with Demi Moore, has made the big leap from comedy to drama with his first serious role in the recently released psychological drama The Butterfly Effect. The movie’s title is derived from the famous chaos-theory, which suggests that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the world might trigger a hurricane on the other. The Butterfly Effect is basically a flick about time travel and the ramifications of cause and effect; however, unlike many tame and glitzy films of the same genre (refer to the Back to the Future trilogy and Frequency), its subject matter is dark and somewhat disturbing.

Kutcher plays Evan Treborn, a mild-mannered, twenty-year old college student haunted by regret. He’s suffered more than his fair share of childhood traumas; traumas so nasty they led to blackouts when he was younger. During his younger years, a psychologist recommends he start keeping a detailed journal to help him deal with his bizarre memory loss. Years later, Evan starts going over his old journals, hoping to unblock some of those repressed memories that have remained hidden from him. In doing so, Evan discovers that he has the ability to go back in time - to pivotal points in his childhood - and potentially change them. Initially traveling back to fill some missing pages in his life, things go awry when his return to the present results in the suicide of an old friend. From then on Evan becomes obsessed with his time-traveling talent. Tripping back and forth, he tinkers with the events of the past to better the futures of his friends and family. But each time he attempts to fiddle with fate, Evan and those around him fall victim to some massively altered realities in which something is always horribly wrong.

Written and directed by the same duo that helmed the wickedly inventive Final Destination 2, The Butterfly Effect is a compelling, edgy and visually stunning genre piece that lingers in the mind long after a viewing. It touches on some fairly heavy, rather depressing issues, but as morbid as some of the events that take place are, all of them are there for a reason, and haven’t simply been thrown in for shock value. The cinematography is one of the standouts of the film, especially the scenes involving a hypnotic Evan gazing at the motionless words on the page of his journal before they burst into earthquake-like tremors. The entire cast delivers good performances, and although he’s not brilliant in the role, Kutcher’s transition from comedy to drama is quite smooth, as he portrays the character of Evan with a great amount of maturity and control. Hopefully, in future films, we’ll see more of this serious side to Kutcher, because I for one can only handle so much of his regular Punk’d boisterousness.

Reviewed by Rhett Butler