The Butterfly Effect- Spoiler Analysis

The Butterfly Effect, where to begin? If a thriller focuses on mytery and suspense then this is one of the best I have seen. The story begins with a man, hiding under a desk writting a note explaining that if it is found, he is already dead and he is trying to make everything right. Our first question is more of an influx of questions. You're given a glimpse of what you can expect and you're so caught on the 'Who, what where when and why' you know you will sit through the movie, whether you think it is good or bad, just to answer the questions that the first five seconds spark!

 Then we go back to 'Thirteen years earlier' and see our main character at seven years of age. The character struggles with blackouts and loss of memeory in crucial moments of his life. We first see an example of this when his teacher at school shows his mother a picture that he has drawn, it depicts a man standing over two bodies with a knife in his hand and when asked why he drew it, he can't remember. We learn that his father is insane yet we don't know why and his mother takes him for a check up at an instution, pleading with the doctor to tell her he's not got the same symptoms. When Evan is taken to meet his dad he is asking questions when he blacks out, the scene cuts to Evan being pinned down and strangled by his father as he screams 'This must end with me!' The father is killed and Evan released and we know that whatever illness his father has, although the doctors can't see it, there is something wrong that his father is trying to prevent.

We then watch as four children, Evan (our main character), Kayleigh, her borther Tommie and their friend Lennie, head down a completely disastrous path, yet parts of the story are missing from the gaps in Evan's memory. We see Kayleigh and Evan playing in the garden then Kayleigh's dad offers to make a movie with them and next thing we know both the children are standing in the basement without their clothes and Tommie is watching from the stairs, Evan having no idea what's happened. Next we see them playing with a stick of dynamite, putting it in a letter box but before the explosion occurs, we cut to Evan lying on the floor of the woods and his friends screaming to help them with Lennie. We have no idea if Lennie is hurt, we only know he is taken away for a while. When Evan tries to recall the events of the explosion at the cinema by asking Kayleigh she begins to cry and he kisses her, this is witness by her brother who then has a psychotic break at beats up a stranger queueing for popcorn. This raises the question as to what problem Tommie has with Evan and his sister being together? Could it have something to do with what happened in the basement? The last clue we're given is the day Lennie comes home from wherever he was taken and in a junk yard they come across Tommie tying up Evan's dog and dousing him with petrol. As Evan and Tommie try to fight Kayleigh steps in and both end up badly injured. Evan blacks out and when he wakes up Lennie is crying, all that's left of the dog is the charred bag he was put in. This is the final straw for Evan's mother who promtly packs them up and moves out of town, with Evan holding up a sign to Kayleigh promising he'll come back for her.

Evan is now fully grown (in the marvellous form of Ashton Kutcher) and studying at college, living with a scary looking room mate who apparently (for some unknown reason!) gets a lot of sex. Evan comes across the journals he was asked to write as a child to help cure his blackouts and after celebrating seven years without them, after reading a few lines, blacks out and is transported back to the moment in question. Being a teenager again, in surprise, he drops his cigerette and burns himself, when he wakes up he finds the scar on his stomach and we ask ourselves the question that his voice echos "if I can casue scars can I heal them?" Can he change past events and is his memory coming back to him? Evan tries to find the adult Kayleigh and ask he what happened the night they were both in the basement, although he doesn't remember it causes some very painful memories for her and she commits suicide that night. Upon hearing of the death of his oldest and most loved friend, Evan picks a starting point for redemption and attempts to go back to the basement and change the events. When he wakes up, Kayleigh is lying beside him, beautiful and alive but after having so much of his memory altered Evan is confused and has a terrible nosebleed. He quickly catches up with current events and tries to live his life until the return of Tommie who learns that Evan is once again with his sister! In a battle witnessed by Kayleigh, Evan kills Tommie in self defense and is sent to prison where he is ridiculed and raped by the inmates. Knowing there is a way out, he asks his mum to bring his journals and makes his escape by once again altering a huge chunk of time in his life.

Every time Evan alters history something drastically wrong happens, he goes from killing Tommie to institutionalising Lennie for the murder of Tommie, from being the 'it' couple with Kayleigh to her living in squalour and prosituting as he tries to convince her they were once happy together. When seeing a psychic more mystery is added to the already twisted plot as she tell Evan he has no life line, he shouldn't exist. In one of the final changes he makes, he attempts to save the woman and her newborn baby who we learn died in the explosion of the mail box but while doing so gets caught in the explosion himself. He wakes up this time with no arms and everyone around him seems better off. Lennie and Kayleigh are together and happily in love, Tommie is no longer muderous and twisted but relgious and thriving at college and Evan can see that his meddling has caused more harm than good. When he tries to kill himself at this stage, he is saved by Tommie, he doesn't even have control over his death anymore. He learns his mum developed lung cancer after chain smoking because of his accident and when vowing to save her he attempts to alter history again and we watch as he accidentdally kills Kayleigh as a child and then wake up in a hospital, his mum healthy, although the damage caused to his brain is extensive and fatal. When trying to rectify his mistakes through the journals the doctor explains that they don't exist that they are a cover story to mask his guilt and we are left wondering if the whole film we have just watched is really all in his mind?

Then we return to the beginning of the film, all our questions about to be answered. Evan has some home movies and attempts to alter his life through them. He watches the one of his birth as he writes his goodbye note and we hear in a voice over the voice of the psychic telling him he doesn't exist, Kayleigh telling him she would've gone to live with her mum and left her abusive father if she didn't stick around for him, his mother explaining about her previous pregnancies, all still births and how he was her miracle baby.. and then we are transported into the video. Something is going wrong with the birth, the baby is losing oxygen and dying, Kayleigh and Tommie move in with their mother, their life is better, Lennie celebrates his birthday with family, his life is better, the mother comes home with her newborn baby, no explosion, their life is better. Even now right at the end when it shows Evan's mother in a hospital bed we're kept guessing, will a doctor come in and hand her a baby? But it seems Evan did the right thing, he ended hi life before it began so the others had a chance, in the future we see Tommie as valadictorian, Kayleigh getting married... a happy ending for an otherwise thrilling film.

Thriller check list

• Do I think the film held the right amount of mystery and suspense? Yes.
• Do I think the plot was portrayed in the right way to create questions for the audience? Yes.
• Were the characters believable and convincing adding to the mystery? Yes.
• Were the plot twists enough to play with your mind and keep you guessing? Yes.

Therefore, do I think this was sucsessful as a thriller film? Yes! The final twist being the death of the main character before his life began cutting out all of the events of the film! Every time an event changed as did the plot, as did our characters and as did the questions that we needed answering. What I liked most about this film is it did answer every question, at the beginning Evan is found with a knife and doesn't remember why he has it, later on when he goes back in time he picks up the knife to rectify an event that went wrong, the smallest details are considered to answer every question that the audience might have yet every time one is answered a new one has to be asked. An excellent psychological thriller.

The rating I would give this film is 3.5 out of 5 Stars.