The Butterfly Effect

(The Butterfly Effect)

Since he is seven, the young Evan Treborn is subject to serious memory troubles. He has no memories about a series of terrifying and tragic events. For example, he has no memory about the day when George Miller, his friend's father, the little girl Kayleigh Miller, obliges the two children to play a pedophile movie under the eyes of his young son Tommy. He is also victim of a deep loss of memory when his friends Lenny, Tommy, Kayleigh and he decide to make explode a letter box thanks to dynamite, a joke that turns to nightmare and finishes with the death of a woman and her baby. No more memory of the time when Tommy, entered in a such insanity protective jealousy rage for his sister who was flirting with Evan, lynchs his friends before to burn alive his rival's dog.

Each time a great black hole has replace Evan's memories that disturbed the childhood of his friends. It is as if his life was strewn of these times without answers…

Several years later, Evan studies in a great university. His memory turmoils seem now to be dissipated. Perhaps because all along these years he was helped by his mother Andrea and under the care of a psychologist who encouraged him to keep a journal, detailing the events of his day-to-day life.

When one day, he rereads a part of his journal, lines of handwriting suddenly scrambles and life around him seems to stop. What he reads seems so much true and transports him in a so real universe that he is experiencing a revival of the scene that ran many years ago. Surprised by this this experience, Andrea confirms him that his father, Jason, today interned in psychiatric hospital, also had found means of reminding the past. But was it memory or imagination ? To find the missing pieces of his life's puzzle, he visits his childhood friend Lenny and his ancient beloved Kayleight.

The first one seems still upset by the event he lived in the letter box episode, and about Kayleight, she has rather pain to survive in the society. Still upset by the difficult moments of her life, Kaleight commits suicide after Evan's visit.

Persuaded that he can change things, Evan dives in his infantile writings and gets modify a tiny detail of the past. A theory claims that if one could return in the past and change some details of our life, whole what derives from it would be modified. This is what we call « the butterfly effect ». But Evan is going to notice that if he changes the lesser thing, he changes everything. By intervening on the past, he modifies the present and he is more and more often obliged to repair the undesirable effects of his corrections. Entered a spiral without end where each time an unforeseen event arrives and rocks destiny in a new way, Evan is confronted with all sort of situations not always agreeable.

When in an ultimate parallel world he finds himself interned as was his father in a psychiatric hospital as a direct consequence of Kaleight's death he precipitate himself, Evan must in an ultimate attempt repair the instant key that will allow everything to run good…

 Spoiler ! the end of the story is revealed below…

Deprived with his intimate journals, he uses the power of his father and by visualizing a film of childhood he is succeeding in modifying for a last time the little detail of the past that is going to change the future of his friends and his own future in an « acceptable » manner.

DoctorSF's Words

The film marks the feature directorial debut of Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber. Writing team behind the "Butterfly Effect" (they also wrote 2003 thriller Final Destination 2), they also prefered to direct this incredible story by themselves.