The Butterfly Effect **** (2004, Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Melora Walters) – Classic Movie Review 1888

Ashton Kutcher’s teen fans are in for a shock with writer-director Eric Bress and J Mackye Gruber’s 2004 sci-fi thriller.

Kutcher dumps his big smile and goofy comedies in favour of frowns, a scruffy beard and this inscrutable but chilling Sixth Sense-style supernatural thriller. He plays a college kid called Evan Treborn who has lost track of time and his memories, blocking out harmful recall of key events of his life.

But, one day at college, revisiting his daily journals he has written since the age of seven where he records his blackout moments, suddenly a flashback hits him. Evan finds a way to remember his lost memories and a supernatural means to alter his life when he is thrown back in time with the power to change the past and so transform the present.

It’s a hugely ambitious, clever film but so puzzling you need to see it twice to find out what it’s all about. Despite acting wobbles and that it’s arguably wading too deep in dangerous psychological waters, the film does pull you into its weird and wonderful web with the aid of Kutcher’s fine performance. And Amy Smart, Elden Henson and William Lee Scott also score as his lifetime pals. Melora Walters and Eric Stoltz also star, with Kevin G. Schmidt, Jesse James, Logan Lerman, Jake Kaese, Ethan Suplee and Cameron Bright.

American critics laughed at Kutcher, but he had the last laugh when the $13million budgeted film earned $60million in the US.

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