Surely everyone has wished he or she could turn back time to erase stupid mistakes made in the past. But if you were in Evan Treborn’s shoes, you’d probably go to the ends of the Earth to rewind the clock. Evan (as a young adult, played by Ashton Kutcher), who suffers from the effects of a childhood plagued by events like involvement with a pedophile and the live burning of his dog, devotes himself to changing his life.
“The Butterfly Effect” begins with a quote stating that the simple flapping of a butterfly’s wings can cause a typhoon halfway across the world. In this case, the catapulting events are a little more sickening than wing-flapping. First, 7-year-old Evan, along with his friend (and later, love interest) Kayleigh (Amy Smart) and her brother Tommy (William Lee Scott), are coerced into kiddie pornography films by Kayleigh and Tommy’s father.
The three mind-warped children, along with their chubby pal Lenny (Elden Henson), end up killing a few neighbors with a mailbox bomb. Tommy resorts to engaging in violent fights and murdering Evan’s pet. Evan, who suffers from blackouts after each traumatic event (and after these occurrences, who wouldn’t?) is encouraged to keep a daily journal, which eventually becomes his time-travel machine.
Following the butterfly metaphor, the resulting typhoon in this story is the eventual suicide of Kayleigh, whose disturbing memories drove her to take her life. Evan, who drops a note into her grave reading, “I will come back for you,” discovers that by reading his old journal entries on the days that he had blackouts, he can return to the days and change what happened.
After going back and preventing Kayleigh’s father from abusing her, his entire present is transformed into a dreamy, colorful college fantasy, where he and Kayleigh are madly in love and popular members of a university Greek system. Life seems to have changed into perfection, but a new tragedy occurs, which causes Evan to turn to his journals and change his childhood again, and again, and again, until he has lived six versions of his life, most of them dark and twisted.
Numerous films have been made about time travel, and it’s important to refrain from analyzing the concept too thoroughly to keep your head from spinning. Since the idea is utterly impossible, nothing — not even films — can really explain how different today would be had something not occurred. Films that attempt to spell out this idea should be visually and emotionally pleasing in order to compensate for the bothersome confusion.
Unfortunately, most images in “The Butterfly Effect” are so sick that the film not only makes your head spin, it makes your stomach turn. Irksome scenes include Kayleigh as a drugged-up prostitute in the third version of Evan’s life, a handicapped Evan trying to drown himself and Lenny stabbing Tommy in a childhood flashback.
Although the story line is unpleasant, “The Butterfly Effect” results in an interesting moral: Even if you could make one skeleton in your closet vanish, an even bigger one might appear. Correcting one mistake doesn’t guarantee that you won’t make another. Although unrealistic, the idea of changing the past is intriguing. You’ll leave the theater thinking of the small choices that led you to where you are today, with the mysterious notion of “What if?”
“The Butterfly Effect” is currently playing at Cinemark 17 theaters, located at 2900 Gateway St. in Springfield.