Film of the Week: The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations

The Butterfly Effect trilogy started off strong. The first in the series, staring Aston Kutcher, saw him suffering from blackouts at random intervals in his life. When he’s older, he discovers that he has the ability to travel through time by reading his journal, and also discovers that those blackouts were when he travelled back. It has a few dark moments, and the story did start falling flat a little bit, but they brought it back and made up for them, and it was complicated enough to keep you watching, but simple enough to not turn you away. Overall making a decent story, so it does make sense when I found that it had spawned a sequel.

The Butterfly Effect 2, Eric Lively, saw him discover his ability when he looks at photographs. The problem is, I can’t give you a full review of the film because, twice I’ve tried to watch it and twice I failed to do so because one of the most boring films I have ever watched. There are too many silences, and when you thought that it would start picking up when he travels in time, practically nothing happens, and the moments he has actually travelled through time are so far between compared to the quick-paced nature of the first film, it really is a turn off. It was a sequel that held up to their reputation. It was bad, which is why I was surprised to find that the series had spawned yet another film.

Maybe the second was popular enough and I was the only one that didn’t like it? Maybe the creator of the series wanted to make up for the bad sequel beforehand? Maybe he just fancied making another butterfly effect movie, and the studio let him, because they aren’t the most expensive movies, and there will always be an audience for time travel films.

Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations, staring Chris Carmack as Sam Reide and Rachel Miner as Jenna Reide, starts differently to the other two. Instead of discovering his ability over the course of the film, he has already discovered and using it to his advantage by catching criminals. He goes back in time, witness the crime taking place, then in present day helps the Police catch them. It also had a different way of travelling through time to the others as well. Sam doesn’t need a journal or a photograph, he just needs to visualise the date and time and he transports himself there. A nice breakaway from the series, keeping it fresh.

It has returned to being quick-paced and therefore kept me watching and figuring out the mystery that does inevitable start to develop due to Sam’s interfering with the timeline. Unfortunately, the mystery that Sam had accidentally created, whilst was unpredictable and offered a nice twist, when revealed, wasn’t developed upon as much as it needed to be, and the ending, whilst wasn’t exactly complicated if you’re familiar with the rules of the trilogy, tried to leave you wanting more, and tried to keep you talking long after the credits had finished, and tried to be impactful. Unfortunately, because you’re familiar with the rules, it just became an unnecessary cliff-hanger.

There was hardly any character development. Sure, a counterpoint to that could be that there doesn’t need to be because the characters are forever changing their attitude and ways due to Sam’s actions, but then my counterpoint would be that there is hardly any character development for Sam either, or for his sister, or for any of the main characters, actually.

It was surprisingly gorier than the first two, and with more, intense violence, which came as a shock, and a little unnecessary also. I understand that they wanted to do something different, but if you take out the violence, it would still be a different, and just as good as. In a way, the violence and gore makes this film worse than the first, whereas if it was toned down slightly, it maybe would have been on par with the first.

It was much better than the previous film because I was able to sit through it in one sitting, but it didn’t live up to the first.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)