Customer Reviews

The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The first Butterfly Effect catches quite a bit of flack because of Kutcher's presence but it really wasn't that bad a film at all; it had some incredibly tense and disturbing moments. A sequel was inevitable and, always true to form, Hollywood offered one up direct-to-DVD starring absolutely nobody worth mentioning. It was a soulless, [...] of a sequel with no aspirations of being better than the first installment.

Along comes the third entry into the franchise and Butterfly Effect: Revelations does what the second film seemed too scared to do, offer up something a little different. Instead of playing it safe, BE3 provides viewers with twists, turns and admirable gore. The acting was decent, though Miner's performance was occasionally spotty, and the finale is surprising though not entirely unforeseeable.

BE3 is a bit closer to horror than to the sci-fi of the first film and it works well for what it attempts to do. I don't believe it's a better film than the first but it certainly outshines the second in every way imaginable. If you're a slasher fan and you don't mind a little time travel, BE3 should satisfy.

The time-travelling thriller series continues with "The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations" starring Chris Carmack as Sam, who as a "psychic" helps the local police capture the criminals of unsolved cases. The fact is, Sam can travel back to the time the crime is committed and he reports everything that is necessary for the police to arrest the culprit. Very few people know of his special ability, though, and his sister Jenna (Rachel Miner), who assists his time travel, is one of them.

But there is one rule Sam must observe - he may watch, but he should never interfere. But of course he does break the rule when Elizabeth Brown (Sarah Habel) asks him to jump back to 10 years ago. And Elizabeth is the sister of Rebecca Brown (Mia Serafino), Sam's dead girlfriend.

The third installment of the "Butterfly Effect" franchise may not be as impressive as the first one, but still "The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations" is surprisingly well-plotted and entertaining. Though the details of the storyline is different from the original, the concept of the protagonist traveling back in time (who makes things more complicated while trying to "fix" the past) remains the same. The storyline is full of plot holes, but it surely keeps us guessing what will happen next.

Some parts of the film are pretty gory, and I don't think gores are necessary to tell this story. Also, it takes some time for you to get past the shaky opening chapters, and I think some viewers will foresee the film's ending. Still the third entry is surprisingly good - I mean, surprisingly - and worth watching though the first one remains the best.

The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations (Seth Grossman, 2009)

There's a Butterfly Effect 3? I wasn't even aware there had been a Butterfly Effect 2. (Turns out, after I did five seconds of research, it was a straight-to-video 2006 release.) In any case, a number of After Dark Horrorfest viewers (those who actually went to the theater to see the usually-awful movies After Dark distributes) said Revelations was their favorite of the ADHF flicks from '09, so I decided I'd watch that one before those no one talked about. (I do admit I watched the two everyone hated first...) And while it's not as good as the original, which was no great shakes but watchable, it's surprisingly not half bad. And the lack of Ashton Kutcher on the screen helps immensely.

Plot: if you've seen one Butterfly Effect movie, you know what's going to happen. Guy is capable of jumping around in time. Guy messes around with his own timeline and causes unexpected changes in his present, which change the parameters of the original mystery guy is trying to solve. In this case, guy is Sam Reade (The O.C.'s Chris Carmack), who is helped in his jaunting by his shut-in sister Jenna (Bully's Rachel Miner), who's been terrified of the outdoors since almost dying in the fire that killed their parents. In any case, Sam is contacted by Elizabeth Brown (American Virgin's Sarah Habel), the sister of Sam's dead ex-girlfriend Rebecca (Mia Serafino in her first screen role). The guy who went down for her murder is scheduled to be executed on Friday, and Elizabeth just knows he didn't do it. She asks Sam to look into it, but that kind of thing is never a good idea. After his jaunt, both Rebecca and Elizabeth are dead, and his meddling has turned a guy who seemingly killed one person at random into a serial killer. With each victim Sam goes back and tries to save, he comes back to a present that's almost unrecognizable (including his apartment actually belonging to someone else, who gets miffed that Sam keeps turning up on his couch out of nowhere).

It's an interesting concept, though I imagine you'd be hard-pressed as a screenwriter not to use it as a cheap way to manipulate the parameters of what it is you're doing rather than simply letting it take its own course. That, to me, is the biggest problem with Holly Brix's script; many of the things that happen are just a shade too convenient, rather than being logical outgrowths of either Sam messing with the flow of time or the killer's identity (and motive). Also, there are a few pieces of the puzzle that remain static while everything else changes for no reason (or, in the case of Sam's friendship with police detective Glenn--which survives a shift that sees Sam going from a police informant to the police's prime suspect for the serial slayings--solely to get around a sticky plot point) when they really ought to change.

Despite all this, I have to admit I liked the movie a good deal more than I expected to, maybe because the actors are actually kind of good at their job, something that's rare in any movie distributed by After Dark. Sure, there are plot holes big enough to send you back in time yourself, but if you can ignore them, it's not awful. **

I happen to like the first one, and suprisingly, liked the second one. I'm not going to go to great lengths to convince you that the 3rd in the series is a good watch, but give it a chance. Maybe not purchase it before seeing it, like I did...but I wasn't disappointed.

Let's just say that if you liked the storyline of the first one, give it a chance. I actually liked the 3rd one more than the 2nd. It's kind of like Butterfly Effect meets Saw. There's much more gore in this one than both BE previous.

It's at least worth a rent....at least!

This was the best of all the Butterfly Effect movies so far. At least I liked it better than the first two.

Yeah, the title is a quote from the movie. Be wary, thee, for spoilers abound.


I didn't see the second one, but that's okay because apparently this one is unrelated to that one and obviously the first one. Without any back story or explanation, the guy in this one can "jump" just like the first movie guy. This time, he's (initially) smart enough to know he can't save people without screwing over other people, and so simply watches the crimes unfold, so he can finger the culprit in the present, and claim he's a psychic and have a perfect record.


His sister knows he can jump, and so does some random guy who is always warning him not to do it and not to interfere and such. Then one day, the sister of his dead girlfriend appears with a diary revealing that she was cheating on him with the guy who ended up convicted her her murder. If there was a good reason for what happens next, I completely forgot it, or totally missed it in the movie, but he suddenly decides that the convicted guy ISN'T really guilty, and so goes to the jail to meet him and tell him so, and wants to help him get a new trial based on the girl's diary describing the affair. The convicted guy shouts that HE (as in, the protagonist) killed her.


He then decides to jump to try to stop her death or something of the sort. While there, he interrupts what should happen, telling the sister to stay in her car while he goes to check up on his girlfriend. Except she's dead already, and the person who killed her slips into the car and kills the sister.


Starting here, I should say that, with no real purpose except its own sake, the film is gratuitously gory. At a level you'd expect from the later Saw movies, except without any real reason to be so gory. It's not only excruciatingly disgusting, but it's occasionally very distracting from the film. Also, there's a gratuitous sex scene for roughly the same reason, and to roughly the same effect/reaction.


When he jumps back, he discovers that this person who killed his girlfriend and the sister has now killed eight people, and is called the Pontiac Killer. From there, he tries various methods to save a victim (and ends up indeed saving her, and getting himself a restraining order issued against him by her) and to find the killer, even trying to catch them. All the while, the Random Guy who knows about the jumping disappears, and his sister always knows about his jumping.


All the "evidence" in the film essentially points to HIM being the killer, losing his mind or something of the sort, and killing the girls. It gets so gratuitous and obvious, that you expect it to be him, in some way or another, or some sort of plot twist or mindfk the likes of which would never be seen in a hack, C-movie like this.


But said plot twist would require a genius writer to climb out of the hole the plot digs into, with basically NO evidence pointing to ANYONE OTHER than him, the protagonist. So, out of nowhere, the killer ends up being his sister. Apparently she's in love with him in an incestuous sort of way, and so she killed his girlfriend and set up the cheating guy to be the murderer, but then the sister threw a wrench into it with the diary, so she had to kill her as well. The other bunch of women were women the protagonist later met and fell in love with, and which we don't see for the obvious reasons of monotony and time.


This comes out of nowhere, and results in... a very questionable-type solution ending. Apparently, a house fire had happened at some point in his history, killing his sister. So he jumped back and saved her, but it ended up killing his parents. So he jumps again, saves his parents, and... holds the door in on his sister's room, essentially forcing her to stay in and die of smoke inhalation or burn to death. NICE JOB, HERO!


So the end part jumps to him in a car, going to a barbeque, with his girlfriend now his wife, and a daughter named after his dead sister. Then the movie makes the full jump to stupid by having the little girl put her doll on the grill and watch it burn with a big smile, I guess implying that the sister was reincarnated into her, or that she's somehow inherited the dead sister's serial-killer tendencies.


The acting overall was lame, and in many cases horribly forced.

I watched this movie on cable the other night and have to say that the movie was less than mediocre. It's not the worst film I've ever seen. But I figured out who the bad guy was half way through the film. It was too predictable and just not all that stimulating. I thought the dialogue was at times over the top and overly dramatic.

I know I liked the first Butterfly Effect, and can't even remember the second one. But as far as I can tell, I think the negative reviews are coming from either those who wont accept Kevin Costner is in the movie, or it has nothing to do with the first one.

I just tried to watch it as a movie on it's own, and it seemed like a decent flick about a guy who can somehow time travel when he takes a cold bath. Nothing explains how he can do this, so i guess some reviewers didn't catch on quick enough. The plot is that of this guy who starts off by helping the cops as a sort of psychic helping catch criminals until he is asked to help with a friend of his murder. Each time he goes back, when he wakes up in the present, something has changed that he seems to have caused. Only some things are getting really confusing for him and he can't figure out why, or why each time he comes back the police seem to be more convinced he is a murderer.

It's not exactly an original concept, it's been seen in many movies on the theory that if you could travel back in time, and you changed something, it could alter history forever. But it's a decent flick to see done in a little suspense/action movie with no science fiction babble behind it.

Worthy of a rental or watch it on TV if its on at least.

When you pick up any of the 8 films to die for, you realize you're not going to be in for an exactly oscar winning performance. Nowhere is this more implied than with The Butterfly Effect 3. Sam, a psuedo detective worknig for the police, has a strict "observe and report" outlook on murder, using his TARDIS like abilities to be able to travel back to any point in his life, and presumably to any point where he could easily reached, as he did not find out who any number of assassins or lotto numbers were. Several people, including a physics professor and his little sister are aware of his abilities, trying to reinforce the simple rule than he can't fix things. He responds several times by screaming repeatedly "I can fix this!" leading to the movies downward spiral. Starting from his attempt to save his ex-girlfriend, he sets off the actions of a serial killer, invariably drawing the police closer and closer to himself.

The acting in this is hand and fist above most direct to DVD. There are quite a few scenes that give it the flavor of a soft core porn or a much worse direct to video, but if you can gloss over these homicidal drop-ins, the movie is tolerable, though you can guess with near certainty the outcome. The ending breaks aware from cookie-cutter somewhat, but feels bland and boring. Some good gore and blood without being a nightmare on elm street or friday the 13th make this a solid rent, though there are portions you have to skip. Overall, nothing worth writing home about, but leagues and bound above a Pulse 3 or a Jeffersons.

this is a movie that i had to watch twice. stuff happens in flashes just as in the previous ones and it keeps you guesssing what will happen next? They could have made more of an effort to make the characters a little deeper.

thats my only negative for this movie. the people in the movie are just people in a movie.

the premis of traveling in time is sooooooooo profound and deep and rich. who wouldnt want to have the power to travel back in time and fix anything you wanted to? that would be soo awesome! Thats why i like the series.

its just that this movie seem too detatched.