‘SPOILER ALERT’

The story begins with a frantic man in an asylum, his name is Evan and he is running from the guards. He finds a secret place under a desk and writes a letter to someone. In the letter the words „save her“ jump out as being the most crucial.

We then go thirteen years into the past. We see a young Evan who lives with his mother. Evan tells his mom that there is a special school presentation and he hopes that his dad can come. It seems that there are some family issues and the father is absent from Evan’s life. When Evans’ mom delivers him to school his teacher demands to talk with her. Its revealed that Evan has drawn very disturbing drawings but he cannot remember them at all. Evans’ mom gets worried and decides to take him to get his head checked. This is not the first time that this has happened. The doctor tells Evans’ mom that he should write a journal so he can remember situations and events if he forgets.

Evan starts to use the journal more often but he still has episodes. One time he even grabs a knife scaring his mom in the process. After that, he does not remember anything. His mom takes Evan to play with his two friends Tommy and Kayleigh. Their father George Miller promises to take good care of the kids while Evans’ mom is at work. Evan is excited to meet up with his friends but soon things take a turn for the worse. What Evan thought was going to be a regular day of playing with his friends turns into George Miller abusing the children. Evan blacks out and when he wakes up George has taken off his clothes. Evan later goes to the doctor once more and they do not find anything wrong with him. His mother decides to finally take him to see his father who is a mental patient. Evan is excited and he goes to talk with his father. Evan almost gets killed by his father Jason but the guards kill him. This leaves Evan confused and sad.

Six years later, Evan is now a teenager and his life is even more dysfunctional. He still gets episodes of amnesia and he is very traumatized. Evan has developed a massive crush on Kayleigh over the past few years and still hangs out with her and Tommy. Also they are joined by their friend Lenny. They get into serious trouble when one day they use dynamite and blow up a mailbox. Evan blacks out again and Lenny ends up in the mental hospital. It seems that they accidentally killed a mother and daughter. Evan has no memory of it but his amnesia episodes start to be a lot more frequent. One night, he goes to the movies with Tommy and Kayleigh. Evan and Kayleigh kiss which makes Tommy furious and he gets into a massive fight. Some time passes and Lenny goes back home. Tommy decides to take revenge on Evan so he burns his dog. Evan once again has an amnesia episode and when he wakes up he just sees a bloody Kayleigh beside him and Lenny. After that Evan moved away with his mother.

It’s the present now and Evan is in college. He is very smart and gets really good grades but he is a social outcast. Evan is great friends with his roommate and he wants to celebrate not having a blackout for almost seven years. Evan goes out with his college roommate and they have a lot of fun at the bar. He even meets a cute girl and brings her back to his dorm. While they fool around the girl finds his diary and Evan explains that he has been writing journals since he was only seven years old. The girl wants him to read a section and when he does Evan gets transported into the past. More specifically he transports himself to the day when Tommy burned his dog. Evan then suddenly returns back into the present. He then decides to visit his home town and goes to talk with Lenny. It seems that Lenny is still traumatized and has not left his house in years.

Lenny attacks Evan and shortly after that Evan once again tries to travel back in time. This time he teleports himself to the day when they blew up the mailbox. Lenny was the one who put the dynamite in, and he was the one who totally lost his mind seeing the mother and child die. When Evan returns from the past he realizes that he might be able to affect it and change it even.

Evan goes to dinner with his mother and they talk about Jason. Evan wants to know more about his father and his mothers seems to know that Jason also had memory troubles. She also tells Evan that Jason often said that he could travel in time. Later in the evening Evan and his mom go to a psychic to have their palm read. When the psychic reads Evans’ palm she panics and tells him that he does not belong in this world, that he has no soul. This upsets his mother and she later reveals that before Evan she lost 2 pregnancies. Evan has always been her miracle child.

After a few days, Evan goes to visit his old friend Kayleigh. She now works in a small diner and has a horrible life. This was all caused by her traumatic childhood. Evan tries to ask Kayleigh about their childhood and what happened in the basement with her father. Kayleigh becomes really furious and tells Evan that he should not have come back. She is still angry at him for leaving her and never coming back. Kayleigh starts to cry and she runs away. Later in the night Evan returns back to his dorm-room and wants to figure out how his father really time traveled. He then hears his voice machine and it’s Tommy on the other end. He tells Evan that Kayleigh just killed herself and its all Evan’s fault. Evan goes to her funeral and sees her horrible father there as well. After that Evan decides that he will change the timeline by any means necessary.

Evan reads his journal and goes back to when he and Kayleigh were in her fathers basement. Evan, now in full control, threatens her father George and tells him to never touch his daughter again. Evan suddenly wakes up in a new reality he has now created. His head hurts and he has a massive nosebleed. Evan gets flooded with many new memories and wakes up in bed with Kayleigh. They are now studying together and a real couple. They are both rich and have very comfortable lives. Evan takes a while to adjust but he is happy in his new relationship. Things don’t last as her brother Tommy is still a problem. Her father stopped abusing Kayleigh but he focused all of his attention on Tommy. One night Tommy attacks Evan and Kayleigh. Evan ends up killing Tommy and goes to prison. In prison he has a hard time adapting but meets a prisoner who tries to help him. At first the prisoner does not believe Evan and his story but when Evan proves it, the prisoner is amazed. Evan with the help of another prisoner manages to find his journal and travel in time once more to clean up his mess. Evan soon realizes that the blackouts he experienced as a child was him traveling back in time as he is doing now.

Evan once again travels back in time, to the day when Tommy killed his dog. This once again totally fails as now Lenny kills Tommy and ends up in an insane asylum. Kayleigh also gets scared and has a horrible life. The nosebleeds that Evan has now are even worse and also he has created an even worse timeline now. Evan tries to visit Lenny but he is totally catatonic. Later Evan goes to talk with Kayleigh but she hates him and tells him to get lost. Evan uses time travel several more times. He even visits his father on that day and that is the reason his father attacked him. His father also had that power but couldnt use it because he lost his photos. Evan tries to save the mom and her daughter but ends up without any limbs. In this new timeline he is also unhappy and he decides to once again change it. His brain cannot take much more of it as he is constantly putting too much stress on himself.

Evan starts to think that maybe his powers are more of a curse as everytime he tries to fix the life of his friends he ruins it. His mother is now also worried about him as his condition is so much worse. Evan decides to try once more to make things better. He returns to the basement and tries to attack George to save Kayleigh. He uses that dynamite to attack him but Kayleigh gets a hold of it. This ends up killing her and Evan wakes up in a mental asylum. He has been here for years after killing Kayleigh and people in this reality do not believe him at all. He is thought to be just as crazy as his father. The big problem in this new reality is that Evans journal does not exist. So now he has no way to time travel. Evan is now desperate as he has no way of saving himself. He goes to talk with his doctor. The doctor is sympathetic to Evan and wants to help him. He reveals that his father also thought he could travel time but when he lost all his videos and photographs from the past he was stuck. Since then he was presumed to be mad.

Evan then realizes that him trying to change the timeline has just caused more pain for himself and his friends. While he is changing the timeline he is just making things worse with each time jump. Either he is suffering or his friends. Soon after that we return to the start of the story. We see Evan escape from his hospital room and he is now hiding from the guards. They soon find him in a room and they start to break in the door. Evan is under the table and he finds an old home movie that his parents made. In this home movie he spots the day that he first met Kayleigh when they were kids. Evan focuses all his power to travel back once more. He manages to time travel before the guards get to him. Evan then goes to Kayleigh and tells her horrible things. Evan tells her that he will kill her if she does not stay away. Because of this, after Kayleigh’s parents get divorced, she and Tommy go to live with her mother.

This causes them to have a normal childhood, they are far away from their abusive father and they turn into healthy and happy adults. Evan loses Kayleigh from his life but he is also much happier. He continues to have a great relationship with his mother and no horrible things happen in his childhood. Evan wakes up in a college dorm, his nose once again bleeding. In this reality he is actually roommates with Lenny who is totally normal. Evan tells Lenny if Kayleigh is around and Lenny has no idea who that person is. Evan is happy because his plan finally worked. Not wanting to continue his curse Evan decides to burn all the photographs and videos he has from the past. He knows who he is and does not want to play with the timeline anymore. Eight years later, Evan is now successful and lives in New York. One day he leaves his office and he spots Kayleigh in a crowd. For a moment they both stop but soon they continue to walk their separate ways.

The Butterfly Effect.