The Butterfly Effect(2004)

Being a psychological thriller, this movie reminds me a lot of Memento, where the main character suffers from temporal memory loss, though the memory loss in this movie seems to  be specifically ‘designed’ to create nasty surprises to the viewers.. a flash and we are seeing something shocking, yet often times we won’t get the whole picture(a break in the causal link). We are brought through the events of the life of Evan (Ashton Kutcher) when he was a kid, adolescent and subsequently a young adult, with his days as being a kid and adolescence haunting in the sense of the nature of the events themselves and also the intention of the production team to create some shock value.

By leaving gaps in some major events in the early half of the movie(as part of Evan’s temporal memory loss), the movie essentially forces you to continue to watch the movie as you would know the gaps would be filled.. just how? And to discover the main character’s ability to travel back to the past to revisit the gaps in his memory and subsequently learning that he could inhibit his past self to change his past to affect his future… was somewhat of a lame discovery (simply because it lacks originality) ,but I digress.

Does the movie lives up to its tagline? I would say yes. We would see the change of fate of the main characters of the movie with just some tweak in Evan’s choice of actions as he inhibits his younger self and changed the way he responded to the events. What’s really fascinating about the movie is that the changes in the main characters at the young adult stage (where Evan would eventually return to after inhibiting his past self) seems believable and logical, and it is disturbing that how significant the changes in the main characters could be after Evan performed his little trick (although some changes were unintended and yet unavoidable simply because our fates were always entwined together). Of escaping death and 180 degree changes in personalities, outlooks and circumstances in life;  change one thing, change everything. 

There are also alternate endings for this movie ( although I’ve only learnt about this after completing the movie). I would urge you to watch the director’s cut of this movie, simply because it really hit a note at the end of the movie .. it would make you think about the timeless question of “what if”..what if you have done or haven’t done something in the past? Will you still be who you are today?.. and begin to realize that we, no matter how insignificant we think we are, have powers over matters we decide, which would subsequently impact our own future and the future of others close to us in unimaginable ways.

And for a movie to make a lazy bum like me to contemplate more about life, I would say, give this movie a go.