The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations

A very mild improvement over the nigh unwatchable Butterfly Effect 2, The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations follows Chris Carmack’s Sam Reide as he uses his time-traveling powers to solve crimes for the police – with problems ensuing as he foolishly uses said powers to change things in his own life. There’s little doubt that The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations gets off to a somewhat better-than-expected start, as director Seth Grossman uses the series’ basic concept as a jumping-off point for a story that is, at the very least, not a complete retread of the original movie. (It’s worth noting, too, that star Carmack delivers a solid performance that’s often better than the film deserves.) The problem here, then, is the increasingly tedious bent of Holly Brix’s screenplay, with the growing emphasis on Sam’s serial-killer investigation paving the way for a fairly tedious and uninvolving midsection (ie the movie starts to feel like a generic network-television cop procedural past a certain point). It subsequently becomes more and more difficult to work up any interest in or sympathy for Sam’s exploits, and it goes without saying that the twists contained within the film’s third act hardly have the impact that Grossman has likely intended. (It doesn’t help that the killer’s motives are a stretch, to say the least.) The ending, which blatantly leaves the door open for another sequel, admittedly does an effective job of wrapping things up (and, oddly enough, ensures that things conclude on a relatively uplifting note), but it’s ultimately not enough to compensate for what’s mostly an uninspired and underwhelming direct-to-video followup.

** out of ****