The Butterfly Effect is one of my favorite movies. It’s absolutely fascinating and a very good quality film. [Click here to see my review of the DVD I wrote a long time ago.] So, when I found out that there were not one, but two, sequels made I knew I would want to see them. I could tell that they weren’t going to be very good movies before I even saw them. I don’t know why they even tried to make sequels to The Butterfly Effect. As far as I know it wasn’t exactly a blockbuster, it was more of a cult film, like Donnie Darko (whose sequel S. Darko I happen to love.) From the descriptions of the movies on IMDb.com, I saw that both movies weren’t exactly sequels to The Butterfly Effect, but movies that used the same time traveling concept as the original. There’s a 20-something guy who keeps going back in time to save a girlfriend but he keeps changing something he didn’t mean to. He comes back to his present with no memory of what happened between and his world is very different.
A year after all of his friends die in a car crash, which he was in as well, he time travels back and avoids the accident. He jumps back to a year after with no memory in between. Same basic premise as The Butterfly Effect. At first everything seems great, but he screws something up and goes back to another time to try and fix it. And so on, and so on. The basic “careful what you wish for” moral. Things in the new reality seem great at first, but then he discovers he’s sacrificed something to get what he wanted; ie. his girlfriend for his job.There was no background to this story. The most set-up you got was that there were four friends, two couples, they’d been together a long time, the guys worked together. There was no history of any of the characters. There was nothing to work up to or explain his first time travel. He didn’t even have a reaction to it like he was surprised when it started happening, or if it had happened before. It was really just for no reason, out of nowhere, he time traveled.
Because there is no character development, the whole movie just seems weak. You don’t really care about anything the characters are doing because you don’t know them. All in all, it’s a lame attempt at recreating a story similar to The Butterfly Effect. Don’t bother watching it. Unless, like me, you are just curious to see the lame sequel to a movie you love.
Both movies, but mostly the second, included some unnecessary and quite graphic sex scenes. Sure, the sex made sense within the story line, but it was unnecessary for the scenes to go on so long (mainly in 2) and be so graphic (in 3.) Adding sex scenes to a bad movie isn’t going to save it. They weren’t even good sex scenes.
I was curious who wrote this disastrous attempt at a sequel, so I looked him up on IMDb.com. Turns out this is the literary genius who also wrote I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. That gives you a good idea of the quality of this movie.
After watching the sad excuse for a movie that was the first sequel, this movie was a relief that it wasn’t nearly as bad. This one lies somewhere between the original and the second. Again, it doesn’t have enough back story of his time traveling. It is apparent that he has been doing it for a long time, but they don’t share much history of it. I felt that I got to know the characters in this movie, and therefor was more engaged in the story. It turned into a bit of a murder mystery with him jumping back to track a serial killer. In the end, the mystery is revealed. It’s such a strange ending, that it just seems a little unnecessary. It’s just a little too ridiculous. It’s interesting and unexpected for sure, but just little “Aw, geez, that is just too weird.” Overall, it’s not nearly as terrible as the first sequel. It’s actually worth a watch.Cheese Rating: 3/5
Hilarity Rating: 1/5
Drama Rating: 4/5
Quality Rating: 3/5
For Fans of: The Butterfly Effect, time traveling movies, mysteries
Final Verdict: Don’t expect it to even touch the original, but it’s a decent dramatic mystery movie.
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