The Butterfly Effect (2004) Poster

Parents Guide

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Certification

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MPAA Rated R for violence, sexual content, language and brief drug use
Certification

Sex & Nudity

  • A man is seen wrapped in a towel in the shower, his pubic hair is visible.
  • A man falls off his bed in his boxer briefs , his penis is partially visible briefly.
  • Most sexual content is in verbal references.
  • A man walks in on his roommate performing cunnilingus on his girlfriend. Brief female nudity shown.
  • A woman steps out of the shower, with full frontal nudity shown somewhat in the mirror (Not very obvious, due to the camera angle.)
  • In another scene, a man and a woman are under the covers with brief moaning.
  • In a prison, two inmates say they will come for a man at night and call him their bitch. A guard is seen accepting money of the two inmates at night and he hands them a key implying that they bribed him to set them free. They are then seen grabbing the man they said they would get from his bed. This is extremely brief and isn't in some versions of the film, but it implies that they raped him.
  • Several scenes of women in their panties, particularly during the scenes at the women's dorm.
  • Woman shown in a seductive leather outfit. Brief breasts. Another woman dressed as a doped prostitute.

Violence & Gore

  • A boy is stabbed in the spine with the tip of an airplane foil.
  • A man is stabbed in the genitals in a cell willing to do a blowjob, then stabbed in the stomach (blood is shown)
  • A kid viciously beats a teen in the head with a pole and plummets him after he trips him.
  • A kid is strangled by his dad in a mental ward, guards then fatally hit him with a stick (blood pools)
  • A man and a prisoner get into a fight with the inmate repeatedly punching the guy and then grabbing him by his hair.
  • A man hits a man with a pole and kicks him, he sprays him and then beats him with the pole and we hear a crack killing him (with bloody results)
  • A college boy apparently tries to drown himself in a bathtub (we see him put his head under the water, but someone saves him).
  • A boy puts a dog in a bag, sprays the bag with lighter fluid, lights a stick on fire and the dog explodes (we see remains and smoke on the ground).
  • A kid puts dynamite in a mailbox and it explodes next to him causing him to lose arms.
  • A kid is striked in the head with a piece of wood, then a girl who is beaten (bruises and scratches are shown).
  • A kid slams his hand down onto wire paper holders and we see the scars on his hand.
  • A boy threatens a man with an explosive. The explosive rolls towards a girl who picks it up. It explodes and kills her offscreen.
  • A man has a nose bleed on more than one occasion when he time travels.
  • A boy tackles over a woman holding a baby, but this was to protect her, not to hurt her.

Profanity

  • 53 "f" words (2 used with "mother," 2 used sexually), 21 "s" words, 5 slang terms using male genitals ("d*ck" and "pr*ck"), 1 using female genitals ("p*ss"), 1 for breasts ("t*tties"), 10 asses (2 used with "hole"), 7 hells, 5 damns, 10 uses of "Oh my God," 5 of "G-damn," 2 of "God" and 1 use each of "For Christ's sakes," "Jesus Christ," "My God" and "Oh God."

Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking

  • Brief drinking.
  • A man briefly smokes marijuana in a bong in the background.
  • 13 year olds are seen smoking cigarettes.
  • Some adults are seen smoking.
  • There is brief heavy drug use.

Frightening & Intense Scenes

  • There are many psychologically disturbing material presented
  • A mother finds her 7-year-old son standing in the kitchen motionless, holding a large knife. He drops the knife in fear.
  • A father takes nude pictures of his daughter and her male friend. Child molestation is strongly implied, not shown, but aftermath is discussed by victims years later.
  • Evan consistently throughout the movie has nose bleeds, in which he starts shaking rapidly and violently or goes into shock, alternate timelines are shown throughout each nose bleed.
  • A child kills another child's dog by burning it in a bag (animal cruelty). The actual burning isn't seen, but the aftermath is shown.
  • The movie is very traumatic and not for kids as it is rated R for a reason. It gets more and more disturbing as the film progresses
  • This is a very depressing movie.
  • Themes of child abuse, pedophilia, bullying, and people going insane.
  • All the main characters are messed up in one way or another: one is a sociopathic sadist as well as a victim of child abuse, one is a victim of psychical and sexual child abuse, one is very unstable and overrun with guilt, one doesn't know if he is crazy or has God like powers, one is depressed that she is unable to have a child, one is a pedophile, etc.

Spoilers

The Parents Guide items below may give away important plot points.

Sex & Nudity

  • A man is implied to be a pedophile as he takes nude pictures of a young boy with his young daughter standing beside him, but nothing graphic is shown. We see the young boy and the little girl standing semi-naked.
  • A man agrees to perform oral sex on a man in prison. We see him bent down but in the end he doesn't do it.

Violence & Gore

  • A man attempts suicide by drowning in a bathtub.
  • None of the violence is excessively graphic, and all is important to the plot.
  • A young man attacks another young man with a bat, the victim manages to get the bat of the attacker after spraying him with some sort of pepper spray and hits him with the bat which causes his accidental death.

Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking

  • In one scene, the main character's mother is shown dying in a hospital due to smoking.

Frightening & Intense Scenes

  • In the Director's Cut ending, Evan makes the ultimate sacrifice by killing himself in his mother's womb in order to keep Kayleigh's death or any of the chaos shown in the movie from happening. This is not a conventional kind of ending to any movie, and it might upset some viewers.

See also

Taglines | Plot Summary | Synopsis | Plot Keywords


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