The Butterfly Effect (2004)

The Butterfly Effect rating: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic

IMDb7.6/10· 553K votes

Rotten Tomatoes34%

Metacritic30%

TMDb7.577/10· 8K votes

With 34% on Rotten Tomatoes, backed by 7.6/10 on IMDb and 30/100 on Metacritic, critical reception of this film has been modest.

About The Butterfly Effect

A young man struggles to access sublimated childhood memories. He finds a technique that allows him to travel back into the past, to occupy his childhood body and change history. However, he soon finds that every change he makes has unexpected consequences.

Cast of The Butterfly Effect

• 

  Ashton Kutcher

  as Evan Treborn

• 

  Amy Smart

  as Kayleigh Miller

• 

  Melora Walters

  as Andrea Treborn

• 

  Elden Henson

  as Lenny Kagan

• 

  William Lee Scott

  as Tommy Miller

• 

  Eric Stoltz

  as George Miller

• 

  Ethan Suplee

  as Thumper

• 

  Logan Lerman

  as Evan Treborn age 7

• 

  John Patrick Amedori

  as Evan Treborn age 13

• 

  Irina Gorovaia

  as Kayleigh age 13

• 

  Kevin G. Schmidt

  as Lenny age 13

• 

  Jesse James

  as Tommy age 13

The Butterfly Effect facts

Budget

$13M

Box office

$96.8M

Collection

The Butterfly Effect Collection

Our take on The Butterfly Effect

This 2004 science-fiction thriller follows a young man who discovers he can revisit sublimated childhood memories, then finds a way to travel back and inhabit his younger self to rewrite painful history. Each alteration ripples forward with consequences he never anticipated, trapping him in a widening loop of unintended damage. The film uses its time-travel premise less for spectacle than for a queasy meditation on trauma, control, and the impossibility of a clean fix. It's dark, twist-driven, and deliberately unsettling, more psychological knot than feel-good fantasy. Best for viewers who enjoy grim what-if puzzles and cause-and-effect thrillers willing to follow their bleak logic to uncomfortable places.