Movie Review: The Butterfly Effect (2004)

I'm reviewing Butterfly Effect for two reasons: 1) To just review the quality of the film, (2 To explain why this movie is brilliant. The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 psychological thriller film starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. Otherwise known as the two people who's faces are creepily close in the photo above. Kutcher stars as this guy who went through a bunch of dark and traumatic experiences as a kid. Then as an adult, he discovers he can access these memories through these journals he kept, and he can actually inhabit his past self from the present. However, when the memories of the past are changed, the present is effected, and it's mainly not in a positive way. This movie does a great job of showing traumatic experience. This kid literally had a crappy childhood, and the fact of the matter is that no adult seemed to really support him when he was younger. His mother is nice, but none of the events that he personally struggles from involve her stepping in. She's still a good character though. As he starts fixing the past, he goes through a variety of different outcomes for how the present and maybe even the future could be. This movie was criticized when it was released for a lot of reasons. Acting, disturbing scenes, and just way too dramatic made up the negative part of this movie's critque. Overall, Butterfly Effect is a great role from Kutcher (his best maybe?) and offers a theory that is actually real in society today. Three stars.