Sometime before I started reviewing things, I saw a cool sci-fi movie in which Ashton Kutcher can relive his past, modify events to make things better, and then wake up out of his memories to find a world of improvements, right? Except, there’s always some kind of unintended consequence that makes things worse, and he just missed the intervening years, so he has to figure out what went wrong, and then go back and fix it better, which will work this time, right? And yeah, it’s pretty cool. You should see it.

I missed the sequel, but Butterfly Effect 3 was my second movie of the festival, and, well… if I wanted to have some minimal grasp of the underpinnings of the world, it’s a good thing I saw the first one. Plus, it’s not really much like they followed exactly those same rules anyway, but at least I knew in advance there’s a dude who came jump back in time and then wander around changing things if he feels like it, despite knowing that it’s usually a bad idea. Only, his murdered high-school girlfriend’s sister comes to him requesting assistance in discovering her murderer. And that can’t hurt anything, right? He certainly won’t accidentally create a serial killer for whom he is usually the police’s prime suspect! …right?

If you can ignore the physics-underpinnings part and just accept that he can go to whenever he wants, etc., the plot is a pretty nice mystery that I figure took me over half the film to work out. Watch for Rachel Miner as a threepeat Horrorfest actress. Good for her!