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The Butterfly Effect drama movie starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz, and others of New Line Cinema presents. is directed and written by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber.

The title most likely alludes to the butterfly in Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder", in which a small change triggers a large series of ripple effects. Ten years later, this concept was then coined "The Butterfly Effect" by Edward Lorenz; see Chaos theory and butterfly effect. The title is also metaphorical for the appearance of brain scans which resemble a butterfly.

The film's tagline is:

Evan Treborn (Ashton KutcherThe Butterfly Effect is a man who suffered traumas as a boy (John Patrick Amedori), but whose recall of events is obscured by blackouts. While searching for an answer to heal his emotional wounds, he finds that when he reads from his adolescent journals, he travels back in time, and is able to essentially "redo" parts of his past. There are consequences of his choices he then propagates back to the present. As he continues to do this, he realizes that even though his intentions are good, the actions he takes always have unintended consequences.

In his childhood, Evan Treborn begins to experience sudden memory blackouts. His mother, Andrea Treborn, fears that he might have inherited his father's mental disease. His father, Jason Treborn, is in an asylum. Medical testing shows that Evan is mentally normal. His doctor advises Evan to keep a daily journal to train his memory. Evan follows the advice.

A first blackout happens in the school while Evan is drawing a picture of his future profession. The very detailed picture shows a man with a knife, standing over several bodies covered in blood. Evan's teacher is rather worried and shows the picture to Andrea. Evan doesn't remember having drawn it.

Evan experiences a second blackout at home, when Andrea accidentally sees her son holding a knife. Evan has no recollection of picking up the knife.

Another day, Evan is at his neighbors. George Miller offers him to take part in making a movie about Robin Hood. Mr. Miller is seen holding an alcoholic drink in every scene. There is a third blackout - Evan finds himself standing in the cellar of Miller's house, naked. By his side stands Kayleigh Miller, similarly undressed. It is apparent that they were forced to participate in a child pornography video.

Evan's mother talks with a doctor about Evan's strange behavior, who convinces her that Evan may be suffering as a result of his father being absent. They arrange for Evan to visit his father as a remedy.

Evan experiences a fourth blackout when he comes to see his father at the clinic. The meeting starts as it should, but all of sudden there is a flash - and Evan finds himself on the floor with Jason trying to strangle him. The guards burst in and while (violently) restraining Jason, kill him.

Kayleigh and Tommy's parents get divorced, their mother moving to her new family. The children are offered a choice of whom to stay with. Kayleigh chooses her father, in spite of his attitude, because she doesn't want to part with Evan. Tommy stays as well.

The fifth blackout happens when Evan spends his time with the Millers and Lenny Kagan, another childhood friend. While hanging out together one afternoon, they find a hidden dynamite stick and decide to blow it up. They plant it in a mailbox and wait. Again a flash - Evan and others are running through the forest, and Lenny is catatonic. Evidently something terrible happened, but Evan can't remember, and no one will tell him. Lenny is taken to the clinic in the state of deep shock.

Not long afterwards, Evan, Kayleigh and Tommy go to see the movie Se7en (this scene is set in the year of the movie's release, 1995). Kayleigh and Evan leave after being disturbed by an early scene. Evan offers to comfort Kayleigh, and as they lean in to kiss, Tommy walks in. In a fit of jealous anger, he threateningly approaches the couple, but gets tripped by a stranger, who he nearly beats to death for embarrassing him. He is subsequently taken away by police.

The sixth blackout happens when Evan and Kayleigh come to see Lenny. They convince him to go for a walk with them. Unfortunately, on the walk they meet Tommy, who has become partially mentally ill and has tied up Evan's dog in a burlap sack and is about to burn it to death. The friends try to stop Tommy, and then a flash - Evan finds himself on the ground, and the dog is dead. Lenny becomes completely catatonic.

The Treborns move away from their town. Evan promises Kayleigh to 'come back for her', but never keeps his promise. Kayleigh supposedly tries to come for Evan, but her father forbids her.

Evan is majoring in psychology at a university. When he brings a girl back to his room, she discovers his old (forgotten) diaries and Evan reads about the events preceding the sixth blackout. In a flash, he returns to the past and learns that Lenny tried to free the dog, but couldn't untie the ropes. This leads him to return to his hometown to find Lenny isolated in his unchanged childhood room, finding him now unsocial and catatonic. After speaking to him he realizes the vision in his room really happened. Seeking to reproduce this strange effect, he reads an abstract about the fifth blackout and learns that while they were waiting for the dynamite to blow up, a woman with a baby came to the postbox and both were killed by the explosion. Waking from this dream, Evan finds that the cigarette burn he received in his memories has appeared in the current reality. Talking with his mother, he infers that his father had the same ability to travel through time. (Later, we find out that his father did it with the help of old photos.)

Determined to learn more, Evan visits his childhood town to find Kayleigh. After a brief chat, he starts asking about the past, specifically the video her father had forced them to do; his questions stir up very unpleasant memories, and the next day Kayleigh commits suicide. Evan extrapolates from his cigarette burn that he may be able to change the past through his diaries. He reads about the third blackout, jumps in the past and convinces George Miller to treat his daughter with respect and to discipline Tommy. The vision ends, and Evan returns to the present.

In this new timeline, Evan and Kayleigh are lovers. Kayleigh is a sorority girl and Evan seems to be a leader in a frat. Kayleigh has come to Evan's place, because in this timeline her father was good to her. However, Tommy, who has recently returned from the reformatory, has become a real maniac, as his father mistreated him. He traces Evan and Kayleigh and attempts to kill Evan. However, Evan manages to overcome Tommy and kills him in the fury. The police comes just in time to apprehend Evan, who is jailed.

Tricking his religious cellmate into helping him by producing stigmata (much the same way as the cigarette burn before, although the cellmate's reaction is not consistent with the new timeline; see Temporal Inconsistencies below), Evan manages to get hold of his diaries and returns in the sixth blackout. He gives Lenny a sharp iron shard so he can cut the dog's rope. Moreover, he succeeds in talking Tommy into releasing the dog. Suddenly Lenny strikes Tommy with the shard, killing him. A glimpse of Lenny going catatonic is visible, then Evan wakes up.

Lenny is kept in the clinic, being socially dangerous. Having left home after her brother's death, Kayleigh has become a prostitute. Evan supposes that if he could prevent the woman's death in the fifth blackout, Lenny wouldn't have gone mad. He returns to the past and rushes to the postbox. Tommy unexpectedly follows him and brings the woman to the ground. The explosion hits only Evan.

To his horror, Evan wakes up to find that he lost both of his arms to the explosion. Lenny has become a rather social young man, and Kayleigh is now his girlfriend. Tommy has become quite religious. Evan selflessly decides that now they all are happy (except for him) and attempts suicide, although Tommy stops him.

Later, he learns that his mother is dying of lung cancer, because she started chain smoking after his accident. Evan returns to the past once again (age 7), to destroy the dynamite prior to the postbox incident. He appears at his house, and looking for something to destroy the dynamite finds a knife. His mother walks in on him as seen early in the movie. He immediately returns to the present and tries a different journal, this time appearing in George Miller's basement prior to the pornographic filming. Evan finds the stick, tries to blow it up, but Mr. Miller hits it out of his hands and the explosion kills Kayleigh.

Now Evan is kept in the clinic for killing Kayleigh. Moreover, he finds out that in this timeline, his diaries never existed. He makes his last attempt to fix everything, using an old film about the first acquaintance with Kayleigh. Upon his meeting Kayleigh, Evan now threatens to kill her family unless she stays away from him to prevent their becoming friends.

At last, everything is fine. Nothing stops Tommy and Kayleigh from moving to their mother's place, and they are raised properly. Tommy (once again) becomes quite religious. Lenny is Evan's roommate, as they study in the university. The paradox is that in order to save Kayleigh and the rest, Evan had to avoid being with her. Evan burns all his diaries and films, as he is content enough with the present and recognizes the instability and delicate nature of the timeline. In the very end of the film, Evan passes by Kayleigh on a busy downtown street. She notices him and stops, but by the time Evan turns to look, she has already begun walking again. Although it is obviously painful, Evan realizes he must not follow her. The look on his face is grim and pale. A selfless but dejected Evan gulps and keeps walking. Kayleigh has been saved.

The Director's Cut of the movie adds a large amount of depths to the storyline, as well as a more detailed look at Evan's ability. Other than small extentions here and there the added scenes include Evan's mother telling him about her still-births, as well as a scene during the prison section of the movie where the prison guards are shown working with the particular prison gang that Evan came in contact to. This results in the gang getting a hold of numerous keys, allowing them to break into Evan's cell at night, with the implication being that they follow through with their previous threats and rape him.

The ending of the film in the Director's Cut edition differs at the fifth timeline. Evan instead finds a film of his birth and kills himself in the womb by strangling himself with his umbilical cord, so that he will not interfere in anyone else's life again. This results in a stillbirth, and implies that the other stillbirths his mother experienced were similair children like him who grew up and created alternate timelines as well, and eventually came to the same conclusion that Evan did. Writerdirectors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber state in the film commentary that this was their original intention for the finale, as it emphasized Evan's choice of self-sacrifice for those he loves more than the original theatrical version. After Evan kills himself we can see the other people whose lives were original mutilated by grief are now happy.

Every time Evan changes his past he goes to the exact moments when he blacked out. This indicates that his blackouts were due to his older self possessing his By producing stigmata when traveling back to his grade school years and impaling his hands in order to convince Carlos that "Jesus is in his dreams", Evan has created an entirely new timeline. In this timeline, he would have arrived in prison with the scars and Evan would have been unable to demonstrate to Carlos that the scars were not there beforehand. Carlos could therefore not logically have been surprised by the scars on Evan's hands. This would suggest that Evan's ability to travel back in time and still maintain physical atributes of prior timelines (for example, the fact that his memories build up rather than being recreated) allow him to effect other people, like Carlos and his memories.Some of Evan's trips do not alter the timeline but instead seem to be have already been incorporated into his original life in a predestination paradox. For example, in his second blackout, his traveling back and looking for a weapon, which is caught out of context by his mother when she seems him suddenly holding a knife in the kitchen, does not alter the timeline because his original timeline already has this change in it. Another example can be seen in his fourth blackout when he visits his dad in the psychiatric institution. His dad warns him that his traveling back is recklessly dangerous because of the changes it could incur, however, this change was also already in Evan's original timeline. This would allow us to conclude that the "original" timeline was a "perfect" timeline, because it is the only timeline in which Evan can come by the knowledge of his ability, and thus it is the only possible timeline which could initiate the story.Following each change to the timeline, Evan assimilates the memories associated with it despite never having "experienced" the events detailed in his memories, yet is also ignorant of many facets of the new timeline, despite having "experienced" them in the new version of the timeline.When Evan is in the psychologist's office as a teenager under hypnosis, the light in the background is on, then it jumps to a different camera angle, then it jumps back to the previous shot and the light is off then all of a sudden is turned on.When Evan is sitting with prostitute Kayleigh in the restaurant, Kayleigh looks through his wallet then sets it on the table. In the next shot, the wallet has moved across the table.

Ashton Kutcher and others have stated that this movie is a combination of two classics: , and a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Tapestry", where one change of a past event leads to subsequent changes.

A recording of the flashback where Evan says,"Wrong answer fuckbag!" is used for a song written by the Emocore band Stalin's War.