The Butterfly Effect

Ben Oakley
Project #1
Movie Review
Seven Ideas
2/22/20102

The Butterfly Effect

In “The Butterfly Effect” the main character Evan (played by Ashton Kutcher) has blackouts fairly often and he is instructed by his doctor to keep a journal of events so he can remember them if his mind does happen to go blank. When Evan is a young boy and the blackouts start the first one we are shown as the viewers is when he goes to visit his father in prison. Evan and his father get into an argument in the visiting cell and all of the sudden Evan blacks out and wakes up to his father choking him, saying “he must die, it’s the only way”, hinting that he knows something of Evan’s supernatural ability, what the “future” is to hold for the young boy,
or the past. Shortly after the jail scene they story jumps ahead six years to when Evan and his friends are just becoming teenagers and Lenny, Tommy and his sister Kayleigh are introduced into the plot.
Tommy is a troubled youth and in the next scene he coaxes his friend Lenny to put a stick of dynamite in one of the neighbor’s mail boxes. The stick of dynamite does not explode for a decent period of time and when the owner and her baby pull into the driveway and go to check the mail Evan blacks out again. When he comes to they are dragging Lenny through the woods and Evan is oblivious to what just happened. Evan, Lenny and Kayleigh are strolling through the woods in the next scene and they stumble upon Tommy who has tied Evan’s dog in a bag and poured lighter fluid on it. In an attempt to free his dog Tommy “accidently” hits his sister Kayleigh in the face with a 4x4 and becomes enraged at Evan, beats him to the ground and he blacks out once again. When Evan comes to Kayleigh is sitting next to him crying and his dog is in front of them in a pile of ashes. Next, the story jumps ahead 7 years and Evan is attending a university,
him and his roommate Thumper are going out on the town to celebrate 7 years of no blackouts for Evan. This is the point where Evan begins to explore the journals he wrote when he was young and realizes that reading these stories launches him back to the past where he has the knowledge of what is going to happen and he can ultimately change the outcome.
During his first flashback while “journal jumping” Evan has no idea what is going on and does nothing to change the outcome, therefore coming to back in the same situation when he started reading. Once he realizes what had actually happened he reads the journal pertaining to the mother and baby getting blown up at their mailbox and when he drops a cigarette on his shirt in the past and still has the burn mark in the present he is awestruck by the fact that he can actually change things. After realizing this fact, Evan jumps back to a scene where Tommy’s father is videotaping him and Kayleigh in some type of sick child pornography film. Evan sets the record straight with her father and when he wakes up him and Kayleigh are in the same bed together and his whole life has changed by tampering with that one moment in the past. Now that Evan and Kayleigh are dating, Tommy (her brother) is very upset at this fact and he comes after Evan trashing his car and trying to kill him. When the two do meet up and Tommy tries to kill Evan the opposite happens and Evan is thrown in jail for killing Tommy. Once in
jail Evan has a horrible experience and he uses his “ability” to jump into the past and get himself out of jail. He reads his journal in prison and “jumps” back to the scene where Tommy burned his dog alive and gives Lenny a tool to cut the dog loose from the sac so it can escape. But things do not go as planned and Lenny stabs Tommy in the back of the neck with the shard of metal, causing him to me tried for murder and institutionalized. So although Evan believes he has the power to makes things right in the future by changing the past, he has effectively sent himself to jail and gotten his best friend institutionalized, so far. Although Evan is coming to the realization that he cannot change the future, he does not stop here. Things in the future are constantly changing due to Evans interference so he makes an attempt to “jump” back to the prison scene where he visited his father to get answers. This is a turning point because his father blatantly explains to him that he cannot “play” god and he will do nothing but make things worse if he keeps going into the past and changing events, then Evans father proceeds to choke him as in the original scene. “Jumping in the past a few more times, Evan does everything from changing the once love of his life Kayleigh into a prostitute and heroin attic, to effectively blowing off his own arms and realizing that this will not work and you cannot change the future he decides to “jump” back one more time to try to make things right. He uses an old home movie from when he first met Kayleigh at his birthday party to jump back and whisper to her “If you ever talk to me again I will kill you and your whole family”, this separates their lives forever and neither of their lives will be as they originally panned out. The fact that Evan tried so hard to make a good life for everyone and all it did was transfer the hardships around to loved ones goes to show that the future is imminent and going back can change things, but fate will ultimately have its way.