Movie Info
Movie Name: The Butterfly Effect 2
Studio: New Line Cinema
Genre(s): Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Release Date(s): October 10, 2006
MPAA Rating: R
Life will always be this perfect! At least for the next five minutes or so…
Nick (Eric Lively) hopes to make the twenty-fourth birthday of his girlfriend Julie (Erica Durance) the best ever with their friends Trevor (Dustin Milligan) and Amanda (Gina Holden). Rushing home for an important job at his fledging tech company, tragedy strikes, and Nick’s world is shattered. Nick discovers that he has the ability to reach back in time and change things. Nick is able to right the wrong of Julie’s birthday, but other advantages can be had from this ability. Nick hopes to make the world he dreams for himself, but that dream quickly becomes a nightmare.
Directed by John R. Leonetti, The Butterfly Effect 2 is a science-fiction horror film. The movie is a straight-to-video sequel to Aston Kutcher’s 2000 film The Butterfly Effect, and the film received negative reviews.
The Butterfly Effect was a very forgettable film…but The Butterfly Effect 2 makes it look great in comparison. While you wanted the characters to succeed in The Butterfly Effect, you want Nick to crash and burn (potentially literally).
Who am I this time?
The movie starts out with the best result. Nick’s girlfriend and his friends are killed in an accident, and Nick’s life is ruined. Nick goes back and stops the accident, and he has a pretty good life…but not good enough for Nick. In an attempt to better his life, he starts to mess with the already altered path and the results end up being tragic. You don’t care about Nick…Nick is kind of jerk who gets what he deserves. It makes you hard to root for any of the characters.
The high stakes (and boring world) of a tech company yes-man is brought to you by Eric Lively. He tries to pull off a kind of modern Charlie Sheen in Wall Street, but it feels kind like a sad version of him (even when he’s “winning” and having sex in restaurant bathrooms). Erica Durance should be the likeable character you want to like, but some of her actions make you not like her as well. The rest of the cast might as well be cardboard cutouts…they just aren’t very interesting (maybe the goofy “enemy” dork Dave played by David Lewis is ok).
Nick, you’re no Superman
The Butterfly Effect didn’t have a lot of visuals and The Butterfly Effect 2 has even less. Biggest visual in the movie is probably the car wreck at the beginning, but even that pales to other movies who have done similar wrecks.
The Butterfly Effect 2 is a waste of time, and I didn’t feel The Butterfly Effect was something that really kept you involved. The movie feels more like a low-rent version of Final Destination than the previous film, and I can’t imagine fans of the first movie would feel any desire to seek this out. With slim ties itself to the first film (a mention of Kutcher’s father), The Butterfly Effect 2 was followed by a completely unrelated sequel The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations in 2009.
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