The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 American science fiction psychological thriller film starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. The title refers to the butterfly effect, a popular hypothetical example of chaos theory which illustrates how small initial differences may lead to large unforeseen consequences over time.
Kutcher plays 20-year-old student Evan Treborn, with Amy Smart as his childhood sweetheart Kayleigh Miller. In the year 2002, Evan Treborn frequently suffers from blackouts, often at moments of high stress. As a young child and adolescent Evan suffered many severe sexual abuse and psychological traumas. Seven years later, while "entertaining" a girl in his dorm room, he realizes that when he reads from his adolescent journals, he can travel back in time, and is able to "redo" parts of his past. His time traveling episodes account for the frequent blackouts he experienced as a child. However, there are consequences to his choices that propagate back to his present life, his alternate personal futures progress from college student, to prisoner, to amputee. His efforts are driven by the desire to undo the most unpleasant events of his childhood which coincide with his mysterious blackouts, including saving his childhood sweetheart Kayleigh from being molested by her father and tormented by her sadistic brother. The actions he takes, and enables others to take during his blackouts, change the timeline in the new future where he awakes. As he continues to do this he realizes that even though his intentions are good, his actions have unforeseen consequences. Moreover, the assimilation of dozens of years' worth of new memories from the alternate timelines causes him brain damage and severe nosebleeds. Ultimately, he decides that his attempts to alter the past end up only harming those he cares about, and realizes that the main cause of everyone's suffering in all the different timelines is himself. At the conclusion of the film, Evan purposely travels back in time one final time to the first day he met Kayleigh. Before this, Evan learns that Kayleigh had a choice to either stay with her mom or her dad. Because she wanted to stay with Evan, she decided to stay with her dad, which caused all the problems in the first place. By scaring her away, Evan makes sure that she goes with her mom, thus allowing her to never be a part of his life. Through this, Evan finally succeeds in saving her life. He then destroys all of his journals and memories so that he is not ever tempted again to make any more changes.
In order to unravel the mysteries of the Butterfly Effect? you will need to collect the random clues in each of the caches in the series.
All of the caches in the Butterfly Effect? series are located in close vicinity to established MTB trails that have been identified by the Baulkham Hills Shire Council. These little known but wonderful trails take you into many of the great forest areas in the Hills district. Further details and trails maps can be found at the following link.
