I can't say I had particularly high hopes for this one. With its "Straight to DVD" credentials and the fact that it was following The (awful) Butterfly Effect 2, I wondered whether it would even be watchable.
But, as a fan of time travel movies and, perhaps because I had 90 minutes to kill, I decided to give it a go.
The jist is that our hero, Sam, is working as a psychic for the police, helping them solve murders. In reality, he's not psychic at all; but a time-traveller who jumps back to observe murders from a safe distance. When the sister of an ex (and deceased) girlfriend gets in touch, he decides to jump back and discover who truly was responsible for her death.
Cue 90 minutes of Sci-Fi drama made for an undemanding audience? Yup, but it's not totally awful.
But, boy, is it flawed.
The script seems woefully underwritten with important details skipped. For example, the way the main character travels in time is, frustratingly, never elaborated on. The idea seems to be that he simply inhabits his earlier self (as in the first film), but we never see him jumping in and having to take himself where he needs to be. He always just appears slap back in the middle of the action. This creates a bit of a muddle in the logic behind what he's doing.
Likewise, we never get a real indication that the world has changed significantly after each jump back to the past. One of the strengths of the first movie was how different the realities were that the protagonist created. This was, after all, the reason it was called The Butterfly Effect. In THIS movie, the extent of his later jumps simply seems to effect which sofa he'll be sleeping on when he wakes up. No other significant changes. And I yawned at how many times he was arrested.
Another problem is the tone, which is wildly uneven. There's a sex scene in here that seems to be directed in the style of a porno. I'm no prude and I like a good sex scene, but this took me way out of the story! Ditto, for a murder scene that is so graphic it verges on torture porn. Had the rest of the film been to this degree, it would actually be forgivable; but these scenes just pop up and simply draw attention to themselves for being unlike anything else in the film.
The most frustrating thing about this movie is that, beneath its flaws, there's actually quite a good story struggling to get out. It may be all rather pedestrian (not helped by the direction), but the murder plot does make some kind of sense. OK, it's a bit daft but nothing a few re-writes couldn't have solved. Although one of those rewrites would have hopefully exercised the final scene which is simply nonsensical and awful.
Heavily flawed, then. But struggle with it and you might be able to make up a better movie in your head.
But, as a fan of time travel movies and, perhaps because I had 90 minutes to kill, I decided to give it a go.
The jist is that our hero, Sam, is working as a psychic for the police, helping them solve murders. In reality, he's not psychic at all; but a time-traveller who jumps back to observe murders from a safe distance. When the sister of an ex (and deceased) girlfriend gets in touch, he decides to jump back and discover who truly was responsible for her death.
Cue 90 minutes of Sci-Fi drama made for an undemanding audience? Yup, but it's not totally awful.
But, boy, is it flawed.
The script seems woefully underwritten with important details skipped. For example, the way the main character travels in time is, frustratingly, never elaborated on. The idea seems to be that he simply inhabits his earlier self (as in the first film), but we never see him jumping in and having to take himself where he needs to be. He always just appears slap back in the middle of the action. This creates a bit of a muddle in the logic behind what he's doing.
Likewise, we never get a real indication that the world has changed significantly after each jump back to the past. One of the strengths of the first movie was how different the realities were that the protagonist created. This was, after all, the reason it was called The Butterfly Effect. In THIS movie, the extent of his later jumps simply seems to effect which sofa he'll be sleeping on when he wakes up. No other significant changes. And I yawned at how many times he was arrested.
Another problem is the tone, which is wildly uneven. There's a sex scene in here that seems to be directed in the style of a porno. I'm no prude and I like a good sex scene, but this took me way out of the story! Ditto, for a murder scene that is so graphic it verges on torture porn. Had the rest of the film been to this degree, it would actually be forgivable; but these scenes just pop up and simply draw attention to themselves for being unlike anything else in the film.
The most frustrating thing about this movie is that, beneath its flaws, there's actually quite a good story struggling to get out. It may be all rather pedestrian (not helped by the direction), but the murder plot does make some kind of sense. OK, it's a bit daft but nothing a few re-writes couldn't have solved. Although one of those rewrites would have hopefully exercised the final scene which is simply nonsensical and awful.
Heavily flawed, then. But struggle with it and you might be able to make up a better movie in your head.