The Butterfly Effect (2004)

A terrific mind bender that makes a lot of demands on your mental faculties and your concentration levels. There are certain parts of the movie that make you go crazy. You wonder why the director and the writer had to make it all so twisted and complicated. This one is certainly not your regular popcorn fare though there are some entertaining scenes.

Evan Treborn is a guy who gets blackouts at certain points due to extreme stress and then he wakes up not remembering what happened. There are 4 particular episodes of Evan's blackouts which are shown. Each is significant to the movie's flow as later Evan finds a way to revisit these instances and he tries to alter the sequence of events post that particular episode. A journal that Evan maintains, helps him to revisit these 4 episodes. Evan realizes that reading the journal entry leading up to a blackout, he can go back in time to that moment

After each time that Evan revisits the episodes, the events in the present are altered. Evan isn't satisfied by the present day events each time and he tries to go back to the very first episode to change the sequence of events altogether. Evan keeps jumping to these episodes in a random manner which is confusing beyond a point.

In the end, there is another crazy twist thrown into the mix. Later, this dubious link helped me make sense of this movie. http://www.themoviespoiler.com/Spoilers/butterflyeffect.html

The one I saw is the director's cut which apparently has a totally different ending compared to the theatrical version, and I must say that this ending is truly crazy and bewildering.

VERDICT: Appreciable attempt but be ready to get mind-fucked in no small measure.