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2004 film

The Butterfly Effect
Directed by	Eric Bress J. Mackye Gruber
Written by	Eric Bress J. Mackye Gruber
Produced by	Ashton Kutcher Anthony Rhulen Chris Bender J.C. Spink A.J. Dix Toby Emmerich
Starring	Ashton Kutcher Melora Walters Amy Smart Elden Henson William Lee Scott John Patrick Amedori Irene Gorovaia Kevin G. Schmidt Jesse James Logan Lerman Sarah Widdows Jake Kaese Cameron Bright Eric Stoltz Callum Keith Rennie Lorena Gale Ethan Suplee Camille Sullivan Tara Wilson Jesse Hutch
Cinematography	Matthew F. Leonetti
Edited by	Peter Amundson
Music by	Michael Suby
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release dates	January 23, 2004
Running time	Theatrical cut 113 min. Director's Cut 120 min.
Country
Language	English
Budget	$13 million
Box office	$57,650,876

The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 American fantasy/drama movie starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz, and others, distributed by New Line Cinema. The title is a reference to the butterfly effect, which theorises that a change in something seemingly innocuous, such as a flap of a butterfly's wings, may cause unexpected larger changes in the future, such as a tornado. The Butterfly Effect is directed and written by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber.

The movie was followed by a largely unrelated direct-to-DVD sequel, The Butterfly Effect 2.

Plot summary

Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher), who suffered severe traumas as a boy (Logan Lerman) and a teenager (John Patrick Amedori), blacks out frequently, often at moments of high stress. While searching for an answer to heal his emotional wounds, he finds that when he reads from his adolescent journals, he travels back in time, and is able to essentially "redo" parts of his past, and thereby causing the blackouts he experienced as a child. There are consequences of his choices, however, that he then propagates back to the present; his alternate futures vary from frat boy to prisoner to amputee. As he continues to do this, he realizes that even though his intentions are good, the actions he takes always have unintended consequences. In addition, he needs to go further back in time after every attempt as several fatal mistakes he makes do something to wipe out that and all subsequent journal entries.

Plot

Age 7

In his childhood, Evan Treborn begins to experience sudden memory blackouts. His mother, Andrea, fears that he might have inherited his father's mental illness. His father, Jason Treborn, is in an asylum. Evan's doctor advises Evan to keep a daily journal to train his memory.

A first blackout happens in 1989 at school while Evan is drawing a picture of his future. The very detailed picture shows a man with a knife, standing over two bodies covered in blood. Evan's teacher is rather worried and shows the picture to Andrea. Evan doesn't remember having drawn it.

Evan experiences a second blackout at home, when Andrea accidentally sees her son holding a knife. Evan has no recollection of picking up the knife.

Evan's best friend and first love Kayleigh's parents get divorced, and her mother moves in with her new family. Kayleigh and her brother, Tommy, are offered a choice of which parent to stay with. Kayleigh chooses her father, in spite of the abuse she suffers at his hands, because she doesn't want to leave Evan. Tommy goes with his sister to protect her from her abusive father. He then blames Evan for the abuse he receives and is abusive to Evan and others around him, making him into a budding sociopath.

Another day, Evan is at his neighbor's house, playing with Kayleigh & Tommy. Kayleigh's father, George, asks him to be in a movie about Robin Hood. There is a third blackout — Evan finds himself standing in the basement of Miller's house, naked. By his side stands Kayleigh, similarly undressed. It is apparent that they had been forced to participate in a child pornography video.

Evan's mother talks with a doctor about Evan's strange behavior, who convinces her that Evan may be acting out because he has no father figure in his life. They arrange for Evan to visit his father as a remedy.

Evan experiences a fourth blackout when he sees his father, Jason, at the clinic. The meeting starts as it should, but all of sudden there is a flash — and Evan finds himself on the floor with his father trying to strangle him. The guards burst in, and while violently restraining Jason, they kill him.

Age 13

File:Amedo.jpg

Evan Treborn and Kayleigh Miller at age 13

The fifth blackout happens in 1995 when Evan spends his time with the Millers and Lenny Kagan, another childhood friend. While hanging out together one afternoon, they find a dynamite stick in the Millers' basement and decide to play a prank with it. They plant it in a mailbox, light the fuse, and wait. Again, a flash indicating a blackout — Evan and others are running through the forest, and Lenny is catatonic. Evidently something terrible happened, but Evan can't remember what it was and no one will tell him. Lenny is taken to the clinic in a state of deep shock.

Not long afterwards, Evan, Kayleigh and Tommy sneak into the movie Se7en. Kayleigh leaves when she finds one of the earlier scenes disturbing, and Evan follows her out. He apologizes, and says it was a bad idea. Kayleigh asks him about the forest, and he comforts her. Somewhat awkwardly, they kiss. Then Tommy walks in. He threatens the couple in a fit of rage, but is tripped by an older boy, whom Tommy nearly beats to death for embarrassing him. He is subsequently taken away by security, sneering cruelly at Evan as he moves past him.

A couple of days later, Evan and Kayleigh go and find Lenny, whom they had not seen since the dynamite incident. On their way to the cabin, they find Tommy, who in his anger at Evan ( for kissing Keyleigh) has kidnapped his dog and tied it in a sack. He threatens to set the sack on fire. There is a flash and again for the sixth time Evan has a blackout. He wakes up with Kayleigh sitting crying next to him with a deep cut on her face, and himself all bruised and battered. He also sees Lenny sitting near the fire, where the sack had been burned.

He is then forced to move away, and promises Kayleigh that he will "come back for ", but never keeps his promise. Kayleigh supposedly tries to move closer to Evan, but her father forbids it.

Age 20

In 2002, Evan is in college, majoring in psychology. When he brings a girl back to his room, she discovers his old diaries and Evan reads about the events preceding the sixth blackout. In a flash, he finds himself living the missed events of the sixth blackout. He watches Lenny try to free the dog, but unable to untie the ropes. This leads him to return to his hometown to find Lenny isolated in his unchanged childhood room, finding him now extremely socially avoidant. After speaking to him, he realizes the vision in his room really happened.

Seeking to reproduce this strange effect, he reads an extract about the fifth blackout and in a similar experience, learns that while they were waiting for the dynamite to blow up, a woman with a baby came to the postbox and both were killed by the explosion. The kids, horrified, just watch her and make no effort to warn her, then run off into the woods after the explosion and Lenny is rendered catatonic by guilt. Legally, all three kids are guilty of murder by omission.

Waking from this dream, Evan finds that the cigarette burn he experienced in this memory has appeared in the current reality. Talking with his mother, she implies that his father had the same ability to travel through time.

Determined to learn more, Evan visits his childhood town to find Kayleigh. After a brief conversation, he starts asking about the video her father had forced them to do; his questions stir up very unpleasant memories, and the next day, Kayleigh commits suicide. Evan extrapolates from his cigarette burn that he may be able to change the past through his diaries. He reads about the third blackout, jumps in the past and very effectively threatens George Miller into treating his daughter with respect and disciplining Tommy. The vision ends, and Evan returns to the present.

The 2nd timeline

In this new timeline, Evan and Kayleigh are a couple. Kayleigh is a sorority girl and Evan seems to be a leader in a fraternity. Kayleigh has come to Evan's place, because in this timeline, her father was good to her (due to Evan informing him about her suicide in her years to come). However, her brother Tommy, who has recently returned from the reformatory, has become even more violent and disturbed, as his father just directed all his anger into abusing him instead of Kayleigh at any point. He traces Evan and Kayleigh and attempts to kill Evan. Evan manages to overcome Tommy using mace spray and kills him with a metal bat in his fury. The police arrive and apprehend Evan, who is put in prison.

Evan persuades his religious cellmate to help him by producing stigmata much the same way as the cigarette burn before. He travels back at the age of seven in the classroom when he creates the disturbing drawing and impales his hands on paper pins. With his cellmate's help, Evan manages to get hold of his diaries and returns in the sixth blackout. He gives Lenny a sharp iron shard so he can cut the dog's rope. Moreover, he succeeds in talking Tommy into releasing the dog. At this time, Kayleigh's face has been disfigured. Suddenly, Lenny stabs Tommy with the shard, killing him. A glimpse of Lenny going catatonic is visible, then Evan wakes up.

The 3rd timeline

Evan is back in his original dorm room. While his memories flash back, he discovers that Lenny is now kept in the asylum for killing Tommy. Going to visit him, Lenny reveals that he could tell Evan knew something bad was going to happen that day, and that he feels Evan should be locked up in his place. Evan travels back to his meeting with his father and asks him how to break the cycle. His father tells him that it is impossible; the only solution left is to stop and accept things as they are, saying that even now by coming back he could be killing his mother. When Evan persists, his father decides that the only way to stop Evan is to kill him and leaps over the table to strangle him.

Evan returns to Kayleigh's house and asks her dad where she is, and discovers Kayleigh has become a prostitute and a visible drug addict. From talking to her, Evan supposes that if he could prevent the death of the woman and her baby from the mailbox explosion in the fifth blackout, Lenny wouldn't have gone insane, Tommy won't be killed and Kayleigh wouldn't have been traumatized. He returns to the past and rushes to the postbox. Tommy unexpectedly follows him and brings the woman to the ground. The explosion hits only Evan, although from a distance.

The 4th timeline

As Evan slowly wakes up in his college dorm room, he sees Kayleigh in the other bed with Lenny, whom he mistakes for his old roommate. As the events and their changes come flooding back into Evan's mind, the scene pulls back to reveal Evan no longer has arms. Evan's arms had to be amputated and his legs became paralyzed as a result of the mailbox explosion. Kayleigh and Lenny are now together (Lenny appearing noticeably trimmer than other incarnations of himself during the film), and Tommy has become very religious. Evan reveals to Kayleigh how much he loves her. Kayleigh in turn tells Evan that the only reason she chose to live with her father was because if she had gone to live with her mother, she might never have seen Evan again. She further says that it may have been possible that they might have become lovers, given different circumstances. Distraught, and appearing to believe that all other characters are now better off in this timeline, Evan attempts to drown himself in a bathtub. Tommy runs into the bathroom and saves him. He then finds that in this timeline, his mother started smoking heavily after the accident, and now has cancer. First, Evan returns to the moment when he grabbed the knife at the age of 7; he searches through the kitchen, looking for something with which to destroy the dynamite, but before he can do so, he returns to the future again. After this failure, Evan returns to the time of the third blackout in the Millers' basement, planning to destroy the stick of dynamite so it can never be planted in the mailbox. He lights it to threaten George Miller as before, but he drops it and Kayleigh picks it up. She is killed in the explosion.

The 5th timeline

Now Evan is kept in a mental institution for killing Kayleigh. Moreover, he is told that (in this timeline) his diaries never existed. However, by talking to the same doctor, he discovers that his father traveled through time by using an old photo album (which, similarly to the diaries in this timeline, is told by the doctor, no longer exists). He makes his last attempt to fix everything, using an old film about the first acquaintance with Kayleigh. Upon his meeting Kayleigh, Evan now threatens to kill her family unless she stays away from him to prevent their ever becoming friends. As Kayleigh runs away, terrified of the boy and crying to her mother, Evan whispers to her, "goodbye".

The 6th timeline

At last, everything is fine. Nothing stops Tommy and Kayleigh from moving to their mother's house, and they are raised properly. Tommy (once again) becomes quite religious. Lenny is Evan's roommate, as they study in the university. In order to save Kayleigh and the rest, Evan had to sacrifice her friendship. Evan burns all his diaries and films, as he is content enough with the present and recognizes the instability and delicate nature of the timeline. At the very end of the film, Evan passes by Kayleigh on a busy street in Manhattan. They notice each other and Kayleigh stops, but by the time Evan turns to look, she has already begun walking again. Although it is obviously painful, Evan realizes he must not follow her. The look on his face is grim and pale.

Director's cut

The director's cut of the movie differs only a little from the theatrical version of the film, while providing a bit more detailed look at Evan's ability. Other than small extensions here and there, the added scenes include Evan's mother telling him about her stillbirths as well as a scene during the prison section of the movie where the prison guards are shown working with the particular prison gang that Evan comes into contact with. This results in the gang paying the guard in cigarettes, allowing them to get access into Evan's cell at night, with the implication being that they follow through with their previous threats and rape him. Another added element in the director's cut is when Evan's mother takes him to see a storefront psychic who tells Evan that he was born with no lifeline, that he was not meant to be. That he has no soul. Evan waves it off and takes back the money, and leaves.

The ending of the film differs at the fifth timeline. In this version, Evan finds a film of his mother giving birth. He goes "into" the video, and kills himself in the womb by strangling himself with his umbilical cord, so that he will not interfere in anyone else's life again. This results in a stillbirth, and implies that the other stillbirths his mother experienced were similar children with the same curse and ability who grew up and created alternate timelines as well, and eventually came to the same conclusion that Evan did. Writer/directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber state in the film commentary that this was their original intention for the finale, as it emphasized Evan's choice of self-sacrifice for those he loves more than the original theatrical version. After Evan kills himself, the other people whose lives were originally mutilated by grief are briefly shown to be living their lives a bit happier (Evan's mother had told him that she was pregnant twice before him and that they were both stillbirths). In the last scene, a voiceover of his mother says that she was pregnant three times before. This is because Evan's mother is shown having a new child - a girl. She is saying to her new child, "before you I was pregnant three times", meaning that Evan is the third stillbirth. Kayleigh and Tommy go to live with their mother and lead a good life. They both graduate from college. Kayleigh gets married.

Another ending (which the directors refer to as the "stalker ending" on the commentary) has Evan see Kayleigh on the same New York street, and recognizing her, decides to follow her, but the directors felt that this would show the character had learned nothing and no lasting sacrifice had been made at all, which was completely at odds with their original conception for the film's ending. Another ending featured the two meeting and making small talk, starting a friendship afresh. According to the commentary, the directors apparently never liked these more optimistic endings to begin with, and it was quickly discarded from consideration during editing.

Blackout timeline

Every time Evan changes his past, he goes to the exact moments when he blacked out. In the early sections of the film we watch young Evan black out several times. Later, we see an adult Evan travel back in time to possess his former childhood self; it is through these temporal journeys that Evan is able to create new distinct timelines. In the first timeline we witness, Evan simply blacks out traumatic moments; later, he is able to revisit these blackout moments by re-reading journal entries about them, which suggests that the blackouts could have been caused by his ability to revisit the past and he "blacks out" when his future self is revisiting his past self. As revealed in the fifth timeline, Evan only began writing the journal entries in response to the blackouts. Thus, the blackouts caused Evan to write the journal, which allowed Evan to travel back to the blackouts, which in turn caused the blackouts in the first place, which caused Evan to write the journal — a causality loop.

Cast

Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn
Melora Walters as Andrea Treborn
Amy Smart as Kayleigh Miller
Elden Henson as Lenny Kagan
William Lee Scott as Tommy Miller
John Patrick Amedori as Evan Treborn - 13
Irene Gorovaia as Kayleigh Miller - 13
Kevin G. Schmidt as Lenny Kagan - 13
Jesse James as Tommy Miller - 13
Logan Lerman as Evan Treborn - 7
Sarah Widdows as Kayleigh Miller - 7
Jake Kaese as Lenny Kagan - 7
Cameron Bright as Tommy Miller - 7
Eric Stoltz as George Miller
Kevin Durand as Carlos
Callum Keith Rennie as Jason Treborn
Lorena Gale as Mrs. Boswell
Ethan Suplee as Thumper
Tara Wilson as Heidi
Jesse Hutch as Spencer

Production mistakes

When Evan is in the psychologist's office as a teenager under hypnosis, the light in the background is on, then it jumps to a different camera angle, then it jumps back to the previous shot and the light is off then all of a sudden is turned on. This is described in the commentary for the director's cut as a 'happy accident.'
When Kayleigh, Tommy, Evan, and Lenny are putting the dynamite in the mailbox, Evan puts the cigarette on the blockbuster and says it should last Lenny two minutes, but his mouth says ten minutes. (Audio/visual unsynchronized)
Evan is portrayed as a member of a fictional fraternity (Chi Phi Beta) in the movie. However, in the original script he is a brother of Theta Chi Fraternity which is a real fraternal organization. Although the final script changed this to portray the fictional fraternity, it is still shown in the credits that one of the members of the hazing scene was a "Pledge of Theta Chi."

DVD release

The DVD was released on July 6, 2004 in the Infinifilm edition. The Infinifilm edition was released with the theatrical cut (113 min.) on one side and the Director's cut (120 min.) on the other.

Beyond the Movie features:
Documentaries:
- The Science and Psychology of the Chaos Theory documentary
- The History and Allure of Time Travel documentary
Fact Track - Trivia Subtitle Track
All Access Pass features:
Filmmaker Commentary by directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber
Deleted and alternate scenes
The Creative Process
Visual effects
Storyboard gallery
Original theatrical trailer
DVD-ROM features:
Script-to-Screen (Director's Cut)
Commentary digest
Gallery
Scene medleys
Links:
- Link to original website
- Link to exclusive content at Infinifilm site

Sequel

Main article: The Butterfly Effect 2

The film was released on DVD on October 10, 2006, it was directed by John R. Leonetti and was largely unrelated. Special features include:

Audio commentary by director John R. Leonetti
Behind-the-scenes featurette

Cultural references

In the Family Guy episode "Untitled Griffin Family History", Peter Griffin states that the panic room he built in the family's attic was devised while watching The Butterfly Effect as a way to "escape to a place where this movie couldn't find me."