The Butterfly Effect -- Surprisingly Watchable.

I’ve just watched The Butterfly Effect - Directors Cut and I have to say it’s not as bad as I was expecting. The plot outline, from IMDB, is pretty snappy: “A young man (Ashton Kutcher) blacks out harmful memories of significant events of his life. As he grows up he finds a way to remember these lost memories and a supernatural way to alter his life.”

What made the film interesting was its pretty bleak view of changing the past. Each time he tried to be smart and have another go it got worse; the idea of leaving things well alone is pretty well advocated. What made watching it strange is that the directors cut, the version I saw, is a lot nastier than the ending from the cinema. Allegedly. And this is where it gets weird as the DVD I’ve got has the directors ending, an alternate happyish ending, a second alternate ending - this one happy - and no sign of the ending that pretty much everyone who saw the film got… very odd.

Still, even with the multiple endings it’s not a bad film, it’s got some genuinely nasty scenes (the prison ones are cringe-worthy) and the idea isn’t a bad one. Worth a couple of hours: 6/10.