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The Butterfly Effect
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.
2004 · Directed by Eric Bress · 113 min · Science Fiction · Thriller · Screenplay in the scene database · 13 frames
Tagline
Change one thing. Change everything.
Plot
Growing up, Evan Treborn, his friends Lenny Kagan and Kayleigh Miller, and her brother Tommy suffered many severe psychological traumas that caused Evan to experience frequent amnesia. These traumas include being forced to create child pornography with Kayleigh by Tommy's father, George; Evan nearly being strangled to death by his institutionalized father Jason, before Jason is killed in front of him by guards; accidentally killing a mother and her infant daughter while playing with dynamite; and Tommy burning Evan's dog Crockett alive. Evan keeps meticulous journals of his day-to-day life as a coping mechanism.
Some time later, while entertaining a girl in his college dorm room, Evan discovers that he can time-travel and redo parts of his past by reading his journals. His time-traveling episodes account for the frequent blackouts he experienced, since those are the moments when his older self occupied his consciousness.
After a traumatized Kayleigh commits suicide, Evan travels back in time and prevents George from molesting her. He comes back to a reality where he and Kayleigh are a happy couple in college, but he discovers George ended up taking out all of his abusive tendencies on Tommy, who grew up to become even more violent and dangerous. When Evan is attacked by Tommy, he kills Tommy in self-defense and is imprisoned. There, he manages to time-travel once more after his mother brings him a journal during a visit.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: J. Mackye Gruber, Eric Bress
- Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti
- Edited by: Peter Amundson
- Music: Michael Suby
- Production design: Douglas Higgins
- Produced by: Chris Bender, A.J. Dix, J.C. Spink, Anthony Rhulen
Cast
- Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn
- Amy Smart as Kayleigh Miller
- Melora Walters as Andrea Treborn
- Elden Henson as Lenny Kagan
- William Lee Scott as Tommy Miller
- Eric Stoltz as George Miller
- Ethan Suplee as Thumper
- Logan Lerman as Evan Treborn age 7
- John Patrick Amedori as Evan Treborn age 13
- Irina Gorovaia as Kayleigh age 13
Production
- Country: Canada, United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: FilmEngine, Katalyst Films, BenderSpink, New Line Cinema
- Budget: $13,000,000
- Box office: $96,800,000
- Themes: prison, mind control, child abuse, amnesia, sacrifice, chaos theory, blackout, trauma, diary, time travel
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