Oh, for crying out loud. Another direct-to-video sequel. Do these Hollywood muckety-mucks think we were born yesterday? They take a moderately clever, mildly successful flick from a couple of years ago, slap a “2” on it, and shovel it out to the masses hoping we won’t notice that the budget was probably less than what I spend on antacids in a year. You remember The Butterfly Effect, right? The one with that twitchy kid, Ashton Kutcher, who kept getting nosebleeds trying to fix his miserable childhood? It was okay, a decent concept, if a bit confusing. Well, get ready for the bargain-bin version because this cinematic dumpster fire is about to prove that sometimes, you should just leave well enough alone.
This time, the ‘hero’ is some corporate stiff named Nick who suffers a tragic loss and suddenly discovers he can play peek-a-boo with the past by staring intensely at old photographs. A tragic loss, you say? How original. It’s a miracle cure for bad screenwriting. Naturally, he decides to “fix” things because, as the first movie should have taught us, humans are simply terrible at learning lessons. So strap in for a dizzying, low-wattage ride through alternate timelines where nothing ever seems to get better, just… different and vaguely more depressing. It’s like watching a kid try to build a sandcastle right next to the incoming tide, but the kid is a charisma vacuum and the tide is a torrent of bad decisions. Honestly, the only ‘effect’ I experienced was the constant urge to hit the fast-forward button.
Review by Ben Dover
What we have here is a cinematic exercise in redundancy, disguised as a deep, philosophical thriller. It’s got all the high-concept trappings of the original Butterfly Effect—the time jumps, the nosebleeds, the utter confusion—but none of the charm or, you know, quality acting. Our leading man, Nick, is played by Eric Lively, who has the emotional range of a damp washcloth. I spent half the movie trying to remember where I knew him from, and the other half wishing he’d just leave those poor photographs alone and get a decent therapist. The whole premise relies on him being desperate to save his dead girlfriend, Julie, who is beautiful but about as developed as a drawing on a napkin.
The core problem is that this movie is cheap. It looks cheap. They’re running around in different realities, but those realities mostly consist of the same drab office building and a couple of slightly different apartments. The first movie was dark, it had a real sense of creeping horror and consequence. This one feels like a made-for-TV movie that got lost on the way to the Sci-Fi Channel. Every time Nick goes back and ‘fixes’ a mistake, the new present is somehow worse, but in the most tedious ways possible—he loses a promotion, he gets mixed up with some dull mobsters. Where’s the guy waking up with no hands? Where’s the truly grotesque consequence? This is The Butterfly Effect with training wheels and a severe lack of imagination.
And the music! A bunch of forgettable rock tunes from bands you’ve never heard of. It’s like they just threw whatever was cheap and available at the soundtrack. Back in my day, movies had scores. Sweeping, memorable music that helped set the mood. Now it’s just background noise that sounds like it’s being played by some kids in a garage down the street, probably complaining about how hard life is with their fancy cell phones and TikTok. Honestly, these millennials and their sequels… they just don’t know how to do anything right.
The director, John R. Leonetti, who was the cinematographer on the first one, clearly got the memo: “Do it again, but make it quicker and cheaper.” Well, mission accomplished, pal. The film rushes through Nick’s various, boring timelines so fast you barely have time to register why the new reality is so awful before he’s bleeding from the nose and jumping back again. It gets so tiresome that by the time he’s on his final, truly desperate leap back, I was rooting for him to just get hit by a bus and end the whole dreary affair.
In the end, this movie is a perfect example of why sequels to good ideas are often terrible ideas. It takes a fascinating concept—the unpredictable horror of altering destiny—and reduces it to a repetitive, low-stakes time-travel caper. Go watch the first one again if you’re bored. Better yet, go rake your leaves. It’s a much more satisfying and less brain-numbing use of your time.
Starring
- Eric Lively as Nick Larson: The dull corporate drone who gets the convenient power to travel back in time. He spends the whole movie looking like he’s trying to remember where he parked his car.
- Erica Durance as Julie Miller: Nick’s beautiful girlfriend who tragically dies and becomes the ultimate MacGuffin for his time-travel shenanigans. Best known as Lois Lane on the TV show Smallville.
- Dustin Milligan as Trevor Eastman: One of Nick’s friends who dies in the initial accident. He pops up in the alternate realities to either be Nick’s loyal pal or a victim of his meddling.
- Gina Holden as Amanda: The other friend killed in the accident.
Thoughts on Special Effects, and Music
Special Effects: Are we sure they had any? The main ‘effect’ is the time-travel sequence, which consists of Nick looking at a photo and everything around him shaking violently while his nose gushes blood. It’s shaky-cam, cheap lighting, and a lot of noise. They clearly blew the effects budget on fake blood for the nosebleeds. When they have to show an actual consequence, like a car crash or a shooting, it’s all quick cuts and poor framing. It looks like something my grandson filmed on his phone, only my grandson is probably smarter than the team that did this.
Music: The soundtrack is a forgettable collection of generic, early 2000s angst rock. It’s the kind of music you hear in the background of a cheap bar or a clothing store that’s desperately trying to appeal to the ‘youth.’ None of it is integrated into the film in a meaningful way; it just fills the space where a properly composed score should be. It perfectly encapsulates the film itself: bland, uninspired, and trying too hard to be cool.
Rating
1 out of 5 Stars (And that one star is for the fact that it eventually ended.)
One of the worst things I have ever sat through. The Butterfly Effect (2004) at least makes you think even if its disturbing as hell, this thing is just bad.
Complete Synopsis and Plot Breakdown
Nick Larson is celebrating his girlfriend Julie Miller’s 24th birthday with their two best friends, Trevor and Amanda, on a sunny lakeside trip. Nick, who is stressed about a potential promotion at his job, is called into work for a crucial meeting. On the drive back to the city, Nick is temporarily blinded by a sharp migraine, causing him to crash their vehicle into a semi-truck. Julie, Trevor, and Amanda are all killed, leaving Nick as the sole survivor, riddled with guilt.
One year later, Nick is still grieving, struggling with intense headaches and nosebleeds, and his career is going nowhere. He fails a critical presentation at work, which gets him suspended. While looking at a photograph taken just before the fatal crash, his migraine hits, and he finds himself transported back to the exact moment the photo was taken, just before the crash. He manages to divert the accident, saving his friends.
Timeline 2: Nick wakes up in a new reality where Julie is alive and they are together, but his career is ruined. He’s fired after defending Trevor from their unscrupulous boss, Ron Callahan. Now poor, Nick realizes this timeline is a failure. He finds a Christmas photo from a party where his rival, Dave Bristol, secured his own promotion. Nick jumps back to the party, deliberately spilling a drink on Dave to distract him, then uses the opportunity to steal and copy critical business files, ensuring he gets the promotion instead.
Timeline 3: Nick is now the Vice President of the company and wealthy, but he and Julie have broken up. He’s a lonely bachelor and is deeply involved in shady, possibly illegal deals with a ruthless investor named Malcolm Williams. He also discovers that in this timeline, his friend Trevor is still alive, but is in debt to Williams. Williams kills Trevor to make an example of him. Nick tries to escape Williams and his henchmen. He goes to warn Julie, but a henchman shoots her, killing her again. Before he can jump back, he is rendered unconscious. He wakes up in a room with a sinister associate of Williams, whom he accidentally kills while trying to escape.
Timeline 4: Nick confesses his powers to his mother, who reveals that his father had the same ability and the time jumps caused progressive brain damage, ultimately leading to his suicide. Realizing he is only making things worse, Nick decides the only way to save Julie and his friends is to remove himself from their lives entirely. He jumps back to the lakeside birthday party and breaks up with Julie. However, she reveals she is pregnant with his child. Upset, she speeds away in his car. Nick realizes she is heading toward the original crash site and chases after her. To avoid an oncoming car, Nick deliberately drives his own car off a cliff to save her, sacrificing himself.
End: One year later, Julie is living happily in New York with her son, Nick Jr. Nick Jr. is seen looking at a photograph and having a nosebleed, suggesting he has inherited his father’s unfortunate power.
Famous Quotes from the Movie
- “It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. Chaos Theory.”
- “Every choice, no matter how small, sends you down a different path. A different life.”
- “I’ve got to go back. I have to make it right.” (He said this about 50 times. It didn’t get better.)
- “You can’t control everything, Nick. Your father tried, and look what happened to him.”
- “I’m done. I’m done going back.”
Notes from the Movie
- The film was released straight-to-DVD in 2006, two years after the original film, The Butterfly Effect (2004), which was a theatrical release.
- Director John R. Leonetti served as the Director of Photography on the first Butterfly Effect movie, which probably explains why they hired him to make this look “the same but cheaper.”
- The film is largely unrelated to the first movie, featuring entirely new characters, though it follows the same core premise of a protagonist using a time-travel ability tied to traumatic memories and photos.
- The ability to time travel in this film is explicitly linked to progressive, damaging effects on the brain, an idea carried over from the original film, where the father of the original protagonist also suffered from the affliction.
- The character of Julie Miller is played by Erica Durance, who was already well-known at the time for her role as Lois Lane on the popular TV series Smallville.