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The Butterfly Effect | 2004 | R | - 8.8.10

SEX/NUDITY 8 - A young woman lies on top of a young man in bed, she thrusts rhythmically, we hear thumping, and they kiss. A young man and a young woman are in bed together under covers, she lies on top of him and we see her moving rhythmically briefly; the young man is bare-chested. We see a young woman in a skimpy leather outfit and a young man in bed (it is implied that they have had a sexual encounter), she pulls up her stockings, the young man masturbates under the covers (we see rhythmic movement) and he throws a soiled (with semen) T-shirt at another young man. A man sets up a video camera and tells a boy and a girl to take off their clothes and that they are going to "act like they are in love like grown-ups do" (we see the boy and girl with bare shoulders). Two men unfasten their pants, and a young man gets on his knees in front of them preparing to perform oral sex on them (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A young man lies on top of a young woman in bed (it is suggested that they have just had sex), she talks about having had "multiple orgasms" and asks him where he learned those "tricks." A young man wakes up in bed with a young woman (he's bare-chested), he falls out of bed, wraps a towel around his waist, the young woman tells him to hurry back because she wants a "quickie." He proceeds to walk through the halls of a sorority house passing scantily clad young women, he goes into a shower room, we see a fully nude (bare breasts and pubic region) young woman stepping out of the shower and wrapping herself in a towel. A young man and a young woman kiss in several scenes, a boy and a girl kiss, and a girl kisses a boy on the cheek. A man is threatened with sodomy. A young man and a young woman talk about her being a prostitute. A young woman working as a waitress drops dishes on the floor, and when she bends down a man touches her buttocks. We see a poster of a topless young woman (sweater sleeves hang over her nipples). A woman wears a low-cut top that reveals cleavage. A boy looks at a Hustler magazine (we don't see anything but part of the cover which shows the title and a woman's head and shoulders), and a man looks at a Hustler magazine. There are several references to the fact that a young man has had many sexual encounters.

VIOLENCE/GORE 8 - A boy puts an explosive in a mailbox and we see different outcomes: One is that a woman and her baby go to the mailbox, open it, and it explodes killing them both (we hear the explosion, do not see the people but hear a news report referring to it as a "gruesome scene"); the other is that a boy rushes the mailbox and he is blow back (we hear the explosion and see him later, missing his arms and requiring a wheelchair). A boy puts a dog in a bag, sprays the bag with lighter fluid, lights a stick on fire, and then there are different outcomes: One shows the boy hitting a girl hard with a board, she falls unconscious, then he hits another boy in the stomach with the board, we see this boy with a very bloody face later and a smoldering bag on a fire nearby (it is implied that the dog was still in the bag and is now dead); an alternate outcome of this scene shows a boy being hit in the head with a board, then kicked in the stomach, we see the other boy igniting the bag with the whimpering, growling dog inside it and the boy threatens another boy who has a stick in his hand by saying "drop it or I'll slit your mother's throat in her sleep"; yet another alternate outcome has the boy hitting a girl with a board in the face (we see her with a huge bloody gash on her cheek), another boy stabs a boy in the back with a metal shard, and the boy lies dead. A young man with a stick threatens another young man, he begins hitting him repeatedly on the legs and back, then kicks him while he is on the ground. The young man on the ground sprays the other young man in the face with mace, punches him repeatedly then hits him hard in the head with the stick killing him (he is sprayed with blood). Two men unfasten their pants, a young man gets on his knees in front of them preparing to perform oral sex on them, he then pulls a knife and stabs them (we see blood on their crotches and abdomens, we hear them screaming and see blood spray). A boy trips a boy who in turn hits him in the face with a metal pole then kicks and punches him repeatedly. A man attacks a boy and tries to strangle him, the man is hit in the back of the head by a guard and we see the man on the floor with a pool of blood collecting around his head, and then we see the man's funeral (we see the attack portion of the scene several times, but the man's death only once). A boy slams his hands down hard onto pointed wire paper holders (we do not see the after effect). A man grabs a young man by the crotch and threatens him with sodomy or death, and a boy threatens a man with castration. A man punches a young man and grabs him by the hair. We hear that a young woman has committed suicide, and a young man tries to drown himself in a tub of water. A boy threatens a man with an explosive, the explosive rolls toward a girl who picks it up and it explodes killing her (we hear the blast). A young man has what look like seizures in several scenes, causing him to thrash, he holds his head (we sometimes hear ripping and crunching noises) and his nose bleeds. A man hits his son on the head and threatens him. A young man shoves another young man against a bookshelf and threatens him, a young man threatens to kill another young man over the telephone, and a young man yells at another young man. A young man bounces a pool ball off a pool table, it lands on a nearby table breaking a pitcher of beer and disrupting the people sitting at the table, they rise in a threatening manner, the young man who hit the ball then hits the pool table with the cue and they sit back down. A young man shoves another young man against a wall. Men yell at a young man as he comes into a prison. A boy is hypnotized to recall memories, he begins to convulse, his eyes roll back into his head and his nose begins to bleed. A boy lies motionless on the ground and appears to be in shock. A girl has bruises shaped like a handprint on her arm (it is suggested that her father abuses her). A young man wakes up in a panic when he realizes that he has no arms and that he must use a wheelchair. A young man is shown strapped into a bed in a psychiatric hospital. A boy stands motionless with a kitchen knife in his hand, his mother enters the room and is alarmed. A boy has drawn a picture that shows a boy with a bloody knife standing over two bloody bodies. A young man breaks down an office door, appears in a panic and hides under a desk while people pound on the door from the outside. A young woman has a large scar across her cheek, and a young man has a burn scar on his stomach where he was burned by a cigarette. A boy twists a doll's head and appears very angry. A boy is rude and mean to a girl causing her to cry. People make fun of a young man because of his appearance. A car has been vandalized and we see it with a broken windshield and dented body. A young woman working as a waitress drops dishes on the floor, when she bends down a man touches her buttocks, and a man yells at her. A boy and a girl climb on a roof. A young man vomits on himself in his sleep, which wakes him up. A young man throws a soiled (with semen) T-shirt at another young man.

LANGUAGE 10 - 51 F-words and derivatives, 7 sexual references, 22 scatological terms, 16 anatomical terms, 16 mild obscenities, 1 derogatory term for Hispanic-Americans, 1 derogatory term for African-Americans, 2 derogatory terms for homosexuals, 4 religious profanities, 5 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - People are shown drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco and marijuana.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - The Chaos Theory, mental illness, missing father complex, pedophilia, child abuse, changing the past, psychology, memory assimilation, repressed memories, prison rape, prostitution.

MESSAGE - Trying to change one's past can change the present for the worse. There are always unintended consequences to any action.

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Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the butterfly effect.

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Chaos theory teaches us that small events can have enormous consequences. An opening title informs us that butterfly flapping its wings in Asia could result in a hurricane halfway around the world. Yes, although given the number of butterflies and the determination with which they flap their little wings, isn't it extraordinary how rarely that happens? "The Butterfly Effect" applies this theory to the lives of four children whose early lives are marred by tragedy. When one of them finds that he can go back in time and make changes, he tries to improve the present by altering the past.

The characters as young adults are played by Ashton Kutcher , as Evan, a college psych major; Amy Smart and William Lee Scott as Kayleigh and Tommy, a brother and sister with a pedophile father; and Elden Henson as Lenny, their friend. The story opens in childhood, with little Evan seriously weird. His drawings at kindergarten are sick and twisted (and also, although nobody ever mentions it, improbably good for a child). He has blackouts, grabs kitchen knives, frightens his mother ( Melora Walters ), becomes a suitable case for treatment.

A shrink suggests that he keep a daily journal. This he does, although apparently neither the shrink nor the mother ever read it, or their attention might have been snagged by entries about how Mr. Miller ( Eric Stoltz ), father of Kayleigh and Tommy, forced them all to act in kiddie porn movies. Evan hangs onto the journals, and one day while reading an old one at school he's jerked back into the past and experiences a previously buried memory.

One thing he'd always done, after moving from the old neighborhood, was to promise Kayleigh "I'll come back for you." (This promise is made with handwriting as precocious as his drawing skills.) The flashbacks give him a chance to do that, and eventually he figures out that by reading a journal entry, he can return to that page in his life and relive it. The only problem is, he then returns to a present that is different than the one he departed from -- because his actions have changed everything that happened since.

This is a premise not unknown to science fiction, where one famous story has a time-traveler stepping on a cockroach millions of years ago and wiping out humanity. The remarkable thing about the changes in "The Butterfly Effect" is that they're so precisely aimed: They apparently affect only the characters in the movie. From one reality to the next, Kayleigh goes from sorority girl to hooker, Evan zaps from intellectual to frat boy to prisoner, and poor Lenny spends some time as Kayleigh's boyfriend and more time as a hopeless mental patient.

Do their lives have no effect on the wider world? Apparently not. External reality remains the same, apart from minute adjustments to college and prison enrollment statistics. But it's unfair to bring such logic to bear on the story, which doesn't want to really study the butterfly effect, but simply to exploit a device to jerk the characters through a series of startling life changes. Strange, that Evan can remember everything that happened in the alternate lifetimes, even though by the theory of the movie, once he changes something, it didn't happen.

Ashton Kutcher has become a target lately; the gossip press can't forgive him for dating Demi Moore , although that's a thing many sensible young men dream of doing. He was allegedly fired from a recent film after the director told him that he needed acting lessons. Can he act? He can certainly do everything that's required in "The Butterfly Effect." He plays a convincing kid in his early 20s, treating each new reality with a straightforward realism when most actors would be tempted to hyperventilate under the circumstances.

The plot provides a showcase for acting talent, since the actors have to play characters who go through wild swings (even Evan's mom has a wild ride between good health and death's door).

And there's a certain grim humor in the way the movie illustrates the truth that you can make plans, but you can't make results. Some of the futures Even returns to are so seriously wrong from his point of view that he's lucky he doesn't just disappear from the picture, having been killed at 15, say, because of his meddling.

I enjoyed "The Butterfly Effect," up to a point. That point was reached too long before the end of the movie. There's so much flashing forward and backward, so many spins of fate, so many chapters in the journals, that after awhile I felt that I, as well as time, was being jerked around.

Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, the co-writers and directors, also collaborated on " Final Destination 2 " (2003), another film in which fate works in mysterious way, its ironies to reveal. I gave that half of a star, so "The Butterfly Effect" is five times better. And outside, the wind is rising ...

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Rated R for violence, sexual content, language and brief drug use

113 minutes

Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn

William Lee Scott as Tommy Miller

Melora Walters as Andrea Treborn

Elden Henson as Lenny Kagan

Eric Stoltz as George Miller

Amy Smart as Kayleigh Miller

Written and directed by

• J. MacKye Gruber

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• DVD & Streaming

The Butterfly Effect

• Drama , Horror , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Ashton Kutcher as Evan; Amy Smart as Kayleigh; Elden Henson as Lenny; William Lee Scott as Tommy; Eric Stoltz as Mr. Miller; John Patrick Amedori as Evan at 13 years old; Irene Gorovaia as Kayleigh at 13; Logan Lerman as Evan at 7; Sarah Widdows as Kayleigh at 7

Home Release Date

• Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber

Distributor

• New Line Cinema

Movie Review

Our lives form a skein of action and reaction, cause and effect. By the time we can see the shape our intertwined deeds have taken, it’s often too late for change. Leaving God out of the picture, all we can do is keep adding days, hoping to cover the bad areas and accentuate the good. But suppose it wasn’t like that; suppose you could shift, ever so slightly, the most foundational moments of your early life. What would happen?

Evan has fugues, mysterious blackouts during which he behaves normally but after he can’t remember anything. During the most stressful moments of his life his consciousness blinks out like a bad bulb. His father experienced the same thing before going irreparably insane and being committed to an institution. Though doctors claim Evan hasn’t inherited his father’s lunacy, they urge him to begin keeping journals which might jog his memory. Evan never really reads what he has written, which is no surprise, given what some of those entries contain. He and Kayleigh, his life-long love, being molested by her father, for example. Or Kayleigh’s brother, Tommy, burning a pet dog alive. Or his friend, Lenny, being reduced to a shambling shell after a senseless prank took the life of a newborn child.

One day, though, a college-age Evan decides to cracks the cover of his journals and the inexplicable happens: He is bodily transported into those repressed memories and learns that he can alter them at will.

His discovery couldn’t have come at a better time. Emotionally distraught over her molestation, Kayleigh commits suicide. Travelling back to the day of the incident, Evan heads off the incident. But when he awakens, he learns his tinkering with the past has radically impacted the present. No longer an emotionally sterile wreck, Kayleigh has blossomed into a vibrant, utterly gorgeous woman who can’t wait to marry him. Evan himself has become a dashingly handsome fraternity prep. Tommy, though, has transformed into a homicidal maniac who is extremely possessive of his sister and in one startlingly violent moment, Evan’s idyllic world shatters.

He knows what he has to do—go back again. But each tug at the skein changes those Evan loves more than he could have imagined.

Positive Elements

Evan’s yearning to have his dad involved in his life testifies to the importance of a father’s role. His constant trips through time are motivated by unadulterated, sacrificial love for Kayleigh and a desire to provide a good life for her. “No one could possibly love anyone as much as I love you,” he tells her, and his actions largely back up the statement.

Additionally, Evan wisely urges Tommy’s dad to discipline him in order to curb the boy’s violent proclivities. A Christian jailbird shares his food with an incarcerated Evan after he has been harassed by gang members.

Spiritual Elements

During a funeral a priest intones, “The Lord make His face to shine upon him and give him peace.” A pious penitentiary inmate tells Evan that “Jesus Himself couldn’t make me stand up to the [Aryan] Brotherhood.” That changes when Evan tells him God has been speaking to him through dreams and then travels back in time to inflict stigmata-like wounds on his hands. When Evan visits his father in the past, his dad says, “You can’t play God, son.” Tommy becomes a kind Christian during one alternate reality.

Sexual Content

Kayleigh’s father forces the prepubescent Evan and Kayleigh to strip for his camera. Though the directors judiciously avoid explicit nudity, the scene is still nausea-inducing. It doesn’t help that it’s repeated multiple times with an adult Evan travelling back to try to correct the heinous sin.

It always seems that Evan is walking in on his roommates tossing the sheets with their squeezes, often accompanied by orgasmic moaning and partial breast nudity. A man gropes Kayleigh when she is working at a diner. Women in skimpy lingerie prance around a sorority and one girl steps out of a shower clad in nothing but water (full-frontal nudity is seen onscreen). A post-coital shot has Evan and Kayleigh lying in bed discussing multiple orgasms. Evan offers to perform fellatio on two Aryan prisoners before stabbing one in the crotch with gory results. Kayleigh becomes a prostitute in one potential world, and makes crude comments about promiscuity and female arousal.

When a woman finds Evan’s journals hidden beneath his bunk, she quips, “Most guys keep porn under their beds.” Pornographic magazines make a couple of appearances, but without revealing their prurient contents. The same can’t be said for the many indiscreet posters that adorn college dorm rooms. There are crude and vulgar jokes and slang.

Violent Content

Very explicit, agonizingly brutal and usually bloody. And Evan’s habit of flitting back and forth between the present and the past insures that some scenes appear more than once. Evan’s dad tries to strangle him and is accidentally killed during a scuffle with asylum guards (a blow shatters his skull, which bleeds out over the floor). While under hypnosis, Evan violently writhes and bleeds profusely from his nose. In fact, that occurs every time Evan returns from the past as his brain rapidly grows, accommodating itself to a host of new memories.

A young Kayleigh alludes to the fact that her father beats her and flashes an ugly bruise on her arm. Young Tommy shoves Evan and attacks a man at a movie theater. A truly horrible moment comes when Tommy pummels Evan and Kayleigh with a plank as they try to stop him from immolating a live dog bound in a bag. A man threatens boisterous frat boys at a bar with a broken pool cue. A stunt involving a stick of dynamite stuck in a mailbox claims the life of an infant when his mother attempts to retrieve her mail. A replaying of variants of that instant includes images of a young boy’s arms blowing off and Kayleigh being killed.

Evan beats Tommy to death with a blunt object in one reality. Lenny stabs him with sharp scrap metal in another. Prisoners roughly seize Evan by the genitals before beating him to the ground. A young Evan impales his hands on wire spindles. A sanguine drawing shows a knife murderer standing over his butchered victims.

Crude or Profane Language

Over 50 uses of the f-word. Other profanities and crudities raise the count above 100. What makes those obscenities all the more problematic is the fact that many of them are voiced by children. Jesus’ name is abused about four times and God’s over 15 times. Crude racial slang targets African Americans, Hispanics and Jews.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Kayleigh’s dad swallows liquor. Evan’s college roommate takes hits off a bong. Patrons sip brews at a bar. Tommy, Lenny, Kayleigh and Evan smoke cigarettes when they’re teenagers, and that experience with tobacco carries into Kayleigh’s adult life. “I’ve quit like a hundred times,” she tells Evan while puffing away. When Evan tries to explain his time travelling experiences to a co-ed, she thinks he’s stoked on drugs. Kayleigh becomes a heroin addict during one of Evan’s trips.

Other Negative Elements

Evan steals a keycard to gain access to restricted areas of a mental institution. One very disturbing scene features a crippled man trying to drown himself in a bathtub.

In 1993, Jurassic Park introduced moviegoers to a scientific hypothesis called “Chaos Theory.” The Butterfly Effect takes that idea—that seemingly inconsequential actions can have huge, unforeseen effects—and makes it its narrative backbone. Not content to stop there, co-directors and screenwriters Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber spliced in wildly disparate plot elements. Imagine combining the psychic bewitchery of Stephen King’s Firestarter with Dennis Lehane’s delusional mind-trip Shutter Island and the classic 1952 time-travel story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury.

You might not think that a movie with so many, well, unique influences could actually work on a story level. And, indeed, The Butterfly Effect does have some holes—huge ones, in fact—but it’s kept moving fast enough and cleverly enough that most audiences won’t notice until they’re well out of the theater.

What you can’t help noticing is this R-rated feature’s content. And there it fails miserably. The brutality in Evan’s life and adventures is stupefyingly vicious. (It’s only somewhat more understandable when you realize the film’s creators penned the pornographically violent Final Destination 2 .) I sincerely wish Bress and Gruber had thought through the “butterfly effect” of young viewers absorbing their ruthless vision as much as they tried to process each of the film’s many twists and turns.

Loren Eaton

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The butterfly effect (2004).

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• Play Trailer

Change one thing. Change everything.

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.

Director, Screenplay

J. Mackye Gruber

Top Billed Cast

Ashton Kutcher

Evan Treborn

Kayleigh Miller

Melora Walters

Andrea Treborn

Elden Henson

Lenny Kagan

William Lee Scott

Tommy Miller

Eric Stoltz

George Miller

Ethan Suplee

Logan Lerman

Evan Treborn age 7

John Patrick Amedori

Evan Treborn age 13

Full Cast & Crew

• Discussions 6

A review by CinemaSerf

Written by cinemaserf on august 12, 2024.

"Evan" (Ashton Kutcher) has had a troubled existence thus far in his young life, and is prone to blackouts. These seem to take chunks of his day away from him as he comes back to a consciousness unaware of what has just taken place, or even where he is! He tries to fill in the gaps by writing in his journal what could have happened then miraculously finds himself back at that exact time and place. It's almost as if these memory lapses were just missing pieces of his jigsaw puzzle that he must go and relive, retrospectively, and infill. The thing is, though, he doesn't readily consider the impac... read the rest.

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Status Released

Original Language English

Budget $13,000,000.00

Revenue $96,800,000.00

• child abuse
• chaos theory
• time travel
• mind control
• memory loss
• psychiatrist

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The Butterfly Effect

Dove review.

“The Butterfly Effect” is a story written around an idea. The idea, borrowed from chaos mathematics, is that something as small as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can set into motion the production of a hurricane. Or, as the film puts it, a very small change to the past can completely alter the present. The film earned its R rating for many reasons — pervasive objectionable language, sexual situations, nudity including child pornography, drug use, and severe and sadistic violence including animal abuse and implied child abuse. Don’t put yourself through the trauma of seeing this film.

Dove Rating Details

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The Butterfly Effect Review

14 Apr 2004

113 minutes

Butterfly Effect, The

Just how many seriously disturbed people can there be in one suburban neighbourhood? That’s just one of many elements that defy reason in a time-travel thriller simultaneously daft and disgusting.

Four children, scarred by a paedophile’s abuse, are swept-up in violent juvenile delinquency. They seem destined for misery and a life of crime, yet one of their number grows from weird kid Evan into brainy science guy Evan (Kutcher). Even more inexplicably, perusing his diaries transports Evan back to moments where he can change things, with repeatedly dicey results. What in theory might have been an actors’ showcase — Amy Smart, for one, plays weary waitress, sorority party girl and disfigured junkie prostitute in alternative time-lines — is undistinguished, to put it kindly, in performances and direction.

Arguably worse than its sadistic absurdity is the depressing, limited scope. In defiance of the title (referring to Chaos Theory’s proposition that the flap of a butterfly’s wings can result in a hurricane on the other side of the world), Evan exhaustingly manipulates people’s actions, but nothing in the world around them changes.

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The Butterfly Effect (2004)

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10 Best Movies about the Butterfly Effect | TheReviewGeek Recommends

Ever heard of the butterfly effect? It’s an interesting concept that even a small change in the past can create a big impact in the future. Filmmakers love exploring this in movies, where characters muddle with time and change a few things here and there, only to deal with unexpected results later on.

In this article, we’ve listed down some awesome movies that zoom in on the butterfly effect, spanning both different times and genres.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Let’s begin the list with the most obvious pick- the butterfly effect. In the movie, Ashton Kutcher plays the role of Evan Treborn, a young man who, almost all his life, has been suffering from serious memory gaps and lapses.

While enrolled in university, Evan learned that he could recreate specific events by rereading his old notebooks and concentrating on particular memories. Evan tries to alter his present by making positive shifts in his history, not knowing that every change will trigger a  cascade of unanticipated events, even his death. 

Run Lola Run (1998)

In the movie, three different “what if” situations play out, each relating to a minor adjustment to Lola’s behavior. The plot revolves around Franka Potente’s Lola getting a telephone call from Moritz Bleibtreu’s Manni, a man who has misplaced a bag with a boatload of money.

If Manni does not fetch the required funds within 20 minutes, she’ll have to face the wrath of a deadly gangster. In all three of the scenarios. Twenty minutes is all Lola needs to find her way around Berlin and get the cash she needs.

Frequency (2000)

Jim Caviezel’s John Sullivan and Dennis Quaid’s Frank Sullivan serve as the film’s main protagonists. On the day of an exceptionally rare aurora borealis, John finds his dad’s antique ham radio and manages to make contact with Frank, who has been using the same device to communicate from 1969 to 30 years in the past.

The father and son team up and try to stop a slew of unfortunate events from happening in Frank’s reality, but their efforts to alter history end up changing the present in ways they couldn’t have imagined.

Looper (2012)

Looper ranks among the best films that deal with time travel and the butterfly effect. In the year 2044, time travel has been made possible, but it’s forbidden and only be accessed illegally. Criminal gangs use “loopers,” who make a living off killing people who are sent from the future.

T he protagonist, Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levit, is also a looper whose life takes a unique turn when his own older self is sent to the past to be dealt with. The best thing about this film is that we get to see the intense cat-and-mouse chase between the same people (in this context, young and old Joe) from different realities.

Next (2007)

Nic Cage plays the role of Cris Johnson, a Las Vegas street performer, albeit he has a special talent that allows him to see the events that will take place two years in the future. Thanks to this talent, he can stay safe in the here and now.

As news of Cris’s talents spreads, law enforcement hires him to thwart a terrorist plot that involves a stolen nuclear weapon. Though without using the expression “butterfly effect,” the movie tackles the same cause-and-effect issues. Cris’s power to see the future makes him alter events, which creates tones of trouble for him down the road. 

Source Code (2011)

Source Code is Jake Gyllenhaal’s most underrated film so far. In this film, Captain Colter Stevens finds himself on a Chicago train without a clue of how he got there, and that too in someone else’s body. A strange woman named Christin insists he’s Sean, a man he doesn’t know.

Before Colter can make sense of any of it, the train blows up, taking everyone with it. This time, Colter wakes up in a strange capsule and learns that he’s part of a military project, the Source Code, which lets him relive the last eight minutes of a dead person’s life. 

The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006)

In the movie, Nick Larson, played by Eric Lively, stumbles upon a unique power, just like Ashton Kutcher’s Treborn. By reading his late girlfriend Julie’s journal, Nick can time travel.

At first, Nick uses this power to fix things in his life and make his relationships better, but as he messes with the past, Nick sets off a chain of unexpected and riskier consequences. The film wasn’t widely received and ended up becoming a box office bomb, but still, it is an entertaining one-time watch.

Le Battement d’ailes du Papillon (2001)

Le Battement d’ailes du Papillon is no doubt one of the most loved French rom-coms out there. The movie follows multiple people in Paris throughout a single day. Each person is caught up in seemingly random and everyday happenings.

The plot knits together their stories and explores how their lives connect. At the heart of it all is a chance meeting between Irene and Younes, where Irene finds a lost earring in a café, and Younes, a musician, lends a hand in finding its owner.

This tiny moment sparks a series of events that ripple through the lives of other characters—a hairdresser, a married couple, a tourist, and more.

Project Almanac (2015)

Critics have called it one of the most ambitious and brilliant indie films ever made. The movie tracks David Raskin, a smart high schooler, and his friends. David stumbles upon his dad’s secret lab in the basement, uncovering blueprints for a time-travel machine.

With his friends’ help—Quinn, Christina Raskin, Adam Le, and Sarah Nathad, David puts together the time machine. Next thing you know, they start to travel to various points in time to become rich, not even thinking for a second that it’ll bring unintended surprises. 

Mirage (2018)

The movie centers on Vera Roy, leading a content life in 1989 with her husband David and their daughter Gloria. One stormy day, Vera stumbles upon a time portal linking her to the year 2016, where a boy named Nico lives in her house. Using this strange link, Vera tries to avert a tragic incident in 1989.

Little does she know her actions will end up disrupting timelines. In simple terms, using time travel, Mirage tackles the moral and psychological ramifications of changing the past while keeping the butterfly effect magic alive. 

And there you have it, the 10 best movies about the Butterfly Effect . Did your favorite make the cut? We want to hear from you! Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

1 thought on “10 Best Movies about the Butterfly Effect | TheReviewGeek Recommends”

In Next, Chris Johnson (Cage) can see 2 minutes into his future. If he is going to get hit by a bus, he senses it 2 minutes ahead and can change the outcome.

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10 Movies Based On The Butterfly Effect Theory

6. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelley, 2001)

Donnie Darko has reached cult status as one of the most confusing movies of all time; and writer/director Richard Kelley will forever be remembered as the man that messed with our heads big time through a bizarre, almost dreamlike experience.

This is also Jake Gyllenhaal’s breakthrough performance as the moody teenager Donnie Darko. Other members of the cast are Jena Malone as Gretchen, Drew Barrymore as Ms. Pomeroy, and his sister Maggie Gyllenhaal is portraying his sister, Elizabeth. All the performances are spot on and the movie wouldn’t be anywhere near its current cult classic status without the amazing cast.

This genre-defying movie is about a troubled youth (Jake Gyllenhaal) with severe mental problems that starts hallucinating about a freaky bunny named Frank. In the aftermath of a jet engine crashing in Donnie’s room and Frank saving Donnie’s life (by willing him out of the house beforehand), the bunny becomes more demanding and starts pushing the teenager to do bad things.

Donnie Darko deals with themes of time-travel and time-traveling objects that disrupt the flow of reality, quantum physics, paradoxes, madness and religion.

There are different timelines in this movie that influence and disrupt each other – therefore a lot of butterflies flapping or not flapping their wings depending on the reality sequence. For example, if Frank didn’t push Donnie to a certain misdeed, other characters wouldn’t feel the consequences.

The movie was actually re-released in 2004 as a Director’s Cut with 20 extra minutes added for enriching the material – but not for providing more clarity. And that’s okay. The reason why Donnie Darko works so well and that it’s quoted by many as their favourite movie, lays precisely in the confusion, in the theories and the rolling over all night trying to figure out “what does it all mean?”.

7. 12B (Jeeva, 2001)

12B is the directorial debut of highly acclaimed Tamil cinematographer Jeeva. He’s the writer, director and cinematographer of this 2001 flick.

The movie gets its name from a bus route in Chennai, making the route 12B the focal point of the narrative. While both 12B and Sliding Doors hold thematic and narrative similarities – aside from a few key moments when Jeeva’s creative input reaches zero and “similarity” becomes “the same” –, they do have some differences.

For one, the main character is played by a male lead. Shakthi (Shaam) leaves his house one morning to go to an interview. In order to get there, he needs to board bus 12B.

Will he catch the bus or miss it? The butterfly effect theory comes into play when a narrator announces that we are about to examine both possible outcomes from this seemingly unimportant event. The narrative then splits into two alternate realities that show us the different life paths taken by Shakthi following the bus incident.

Another difference is, of course, that the Kollywood (no, it’s not a misspell) romantic comedy-drama is sprinkled with musical moments. But the most interesting thing about this movie, and the only part that seems truly original, is that these two possible courses of Shakthi’s life end up morphing into one: Shakthi 1 tinkers with the course of life of Shakthi 2.

12B got generally good reviews in India, and has a 6.3 rating on IMDB. But is it worth watching? Yes, as long as you don’t watch it expecting greatness.

Watch it for its good choreography, Tamil humour, charming characters and the tiny original sci-fi idea that pushes the boundaries of this alternate-lives-plagued-by-chaos story. And because it’s another movie to add to your butterfly effect collection.

8. Chaos Theory (Marcos Siega, 2008)

In this American dramedy the chaos theory is at the core of one man’s rapidly descending happiness and stability (to put it mildly).

The story centres Frank (Ryan Reynolds), a motivational speaker obsessed with punctuality. His wife Susan (Emily Mortimer) doesn’t share his enthusiasm for an overly scheduled life and attempts to ease him up a bit.

To do that, she turns the clock back 10 minutes in an attempt to give her husband more time one very important morning. She accomplishes the opposite and Frank ends up missing the ferry – yet another butterfly effect movie that borrows on the idea of missed public transport that causes unexpected changes in the characters’ lives.

Only in Chaos Theory there are no alternate realities or parallel universes. There’s no magic realism, no time-travel or sci-fi, it’s just real life at its messiest.

The story thematically plays on both definitions of chaos – as a noun and as a theory. As a general definition, chaos refers to randomness and disorder. Its scientific meaning is dynamic instability, which tackles the unpredictability of complex systems and their interactions and points to the butterfly effect theory.

The movie’s tagline: “What if your life was completely in order? What if it all is about to change, by accident?” gives us an earlier clue on this conceptual playfulness.

Marcos Siega’s third directorial feature (apart from his TV involvement) is not an intellectual attempt, but a pure-blooded American comedy, with the platitudes and turn of events that Hollywood has gotten us used to. But that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy this flick.

Especially when its stars are the likable Ryan Reynolds and Emily Mortimer and the movie’s takeout is to “say yes to whim, say yes to chance, say yes to chaos”. How can you say “no” to that?

9. Mr. Nobody (Jaco Van Dormael, 2009)

From one of cinema’s most original filmmakers, Mr. Nobody is a dazzling sci-fi epic. Written and directed by Jaco Van Dormael, the sci-fi romantic drama is a truly complex and artistic movie, one that taps into numerous themes and makes use of fantastic visual effects.

At the age of 9, Nemo Nobody (portrayed as an adult by multitalented Jared Leto) has to make a decision of whether to stay with his father or move away with his mother. Standing on the train platform, the boy is unable to make a choice and thus creates infinite possibilities for himself.

The movie goes on exploring all the possible outcomes in a nonlinear fashion, jumping from mysterious old Nemo from year 2092, to adult, teenage and young Nemo born in 1975 – each with their own parallel lives. Like in Blind Chance, we again encounter the train leitmotif as the marker of the deciding event of the story.

Mr. Nobody is deeply philosophical and explorative, getting inspiration not only from the butterfly effect theory (a leaf’s journey causing Nemo’s parents meeting), but also from chaos theory and quantum mechanics, exploring everything from matter to events and chain reactions.

In an interview with Collider in 2013, the Belgian director claimed that “the film is very simple, it resembles the way we think, with multiple possibilities. It’s like having a phone call while, at the same time, having a conversation on the computer while, at the same time, watching a film.”

A strange film with an even stranger journey, Mr. Nobody packs a lot of themes and ideas of countless “what if” scenarios, alternate lives, sci-fi, romance and drama in a very intelligent and thought-provoking manner.

10. About Time (Richard Curtis, 2013)

Richard Curtis’ third directorial feature after Love, Actually and The Boat That Rocket, brought us a charming, time-travel infused romantic comedy, with a fresh take on modern love.

Tim, a lonely 21-year-old youth, finds out that he has the ability to travel in time. So there goes, with this revelation and newfound superpower, our hero decides to go on a love quest. All he really wants is a girlfriend and the stability that comes with a relationship. But is his time travel ability that hinders his efforts and it’s the same ability that ultimately aids him.

It is also the time travel bit that gets messy and shifts into the butterfly effect territory. The movie proves its support of the theory by showing us that even when we think we can escape every day’s randomness by going back through time and carefully forging a new path, even then the butterfly will flutter its wings and cause other unforeseen events.

About Time stars Domhnall Gleeson as Tim – who’s had a fantastic 2015, acting in Ex-Machina, The Revenant, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Brooklyn –, Rachel McAdams as Mary, the wooee – Oscar nominated actress and rom-com poster girl for The Notebook, The Time Traveler’s Wife and Aloha – and Bill Nighy as Tim’s dad in one of his most endearing roles since Love, Actually.

The great revelation of this movie is that the main focus of the story is not actually romantic love. Richard Curtis takes a page out of Hitchcock’s book in Psycho and kills off the main character (“the quest for love”) in the first part of the movie.

The actors give outstanding performances and the chemistry between Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams is palpable. The soundtrack is perfect, and for those of you that enjoy this genre, you will be greatly rewarded.

For those of you sci-fi lovers that are considering watching this movie only for its time travel narrative: don’t. You will be disappointed. The idea is messy, the rules are broken and in the end the theory lacks logic.

In a nutshell, About Time is a wonderful story about family, love and what it means to live a life that you’re proud of, with or without the benefit of traveling thorough time. This story is more than a time-travel romantic comedy, it is a meditation on relationships, on decisions and living.

Honorable Mentions: Jurassic Park, Frequency, Looper.

Author Bio: Clara Nicolaescu is a full time adventurer passionate about storytelling. When she’s not geeking out watching movies, she’s a digital and writing wizard.

• Mental Health

Why the "Butterfly Effect" Should Inspire You – Not Lead to Decision Anxiety

It is said that when a butterfly flaps its wings in one region of the earth, it could alter the weather patterns in a completely different part of the world. Known as the "butterfly effect," the theory suggests that the small gust of wind a butterfly produces on its morning quest for nectar could actually lead to a tsunami or tornado elsewhere. And though this sort of causation is no more than just a theory, the butterfly effect is a reminder that even the smallest of actions can have the greatest impact.

Similar to the burnt toast theory , the butterfly effect isn't just some buzzword trending on TikTok; it's a powerful reminder that you can have more influence over your life than you may realize.

But before you find yourself deep-breathing your way out of an anxiety rash on your chest, know that the butterfly effect isn't meant to make you spiral about all of your decisions moving forward. Instead, think of the butterfly effect as a positive thing: it's a reminder that there's power hidden within the tiniest of actions and decisions.

Below, mental health expert Caroline Fenkel, LCSW, DSW, shares more about the butterfly effect and how to incorporate its message into your daily mindset without falling victim to decision anxiety.

Experts Featured in This Article

Caroline Fenkel , LCSW, DSW, is a mental health expert and chief clinical officer at Charlie Health.

What Is the Butterfly Effect?

"The butterfly effect suggests that small changes in a system can lead to significant and often unpredictable outcomes over time," Dr. Fenkel says. Though you may not think you're doing much to hit your goals or meet an expectation, it's a reminder that the small work you put in can actually be more monumental than you think.

An example of the butterfly effect could be meeting someone new at a party who works in the job industry you were hoping to transition to. Although your job search may have felt stagnant up to that point, meeting this person could eventually lead to a career opportunity that you never anticipated.

On a deeper level, the butterfly effect proves just how interconnected the world really is. "It encourages us to recognize the potential impact of our actions and approach our lives with greater awareness and intentionality," Dr. Fenkel says.

How to Implement the Butterfly Effect Into Your Life Without Spiraling From Decision Anxiety

Understanding the butterfly effect is empowering. It can help you take back control of your life if you ever feel like things aren't going your way. "It reminds us that our seemingly minor actions and decisions can have a far-reaching impact, reinforcing the idea that every choice matters," Dr. Fenkel says.

To implement this understanding into your life, Dr. Fenkel recommends approaching your decisions with mindfulness. "Consider the potential ripple effects of your actions," she says. Again, this isn't meant to make you overthink your decisions. Instead, "embrace this awareness to guide your decisions with intentionality and purpose."

If the butterfly effect does induce some anxiety, however, Dr. Fenkel suggests focusing on the values and intentions behind your decisions rather than obsessing over the possible outcomes. "Break down decisions into manageable steps, and remember that while you can't predict every outcome, you can control how you respond to them," she adds.

Even if something leads you to believe something wasn't the "right" decision or move, it's likely that it's all part of the bigger picture.

Taylor Andrews is a Balance editor at PS who specializes in topics relating to sex, relationships, dating, sexual health, mental health, and more.