I don’t see any CS threads for this movie yet, so I’ll open this for general discussion. But, before everyone gets into plot holes, acting, liked it/hated it, etc., I have a question, please. What was the ‘crazy’ father trying to correct? That is, was it mentioned/alluded to and I just missed it, or was it not revealed at all, and left to the viewer?
You are correct: they never do say what the father was trying to “correct.” They just let you know that obviously the father had the same “abilities” to go back in time and change things as the son now has.
I suppose the adventures of the father would make a whole 'nother movie.
The father thing is a plot device to let the son know more about his abilities and their consequences. While we know nothing about what the father was trying to “correct” we can guess that it could be a number of things similar to the experiences of the son: someone else died for example that he wanted to save, or he just now wanted to change things to get out of the criminal mental ward. Whatever it was, the son finds out at the end that the father was desperate to get some sort of “picture album” and that leads the son to realize that his own journals may not be the only way to access his abilities, thus leading to his “experament” at the end using home movies instead of his journals.
One question I had is whether or not he could go back to the same time more than once. If so, and if it were me, I would go back to the time he killed her wacko brother, only this time refrain from actually killing him. He had the girl and the perfect life (except for the wacko brother, of course) but I’d just not kill him this time around and let him get arrested, etc. Choosing anything else opens the possibility for all sorts of unforseeh circumstances, so I’d take the “known” that is the best overall and just protect myself as best as possible against the “known evil” of her brother. But that’s just me!
Perfect, except for being stuck in a fraternity. Seriously, though, it does seem like he could have kept going back to the same time and trying to get it right, like Groundhog Day. It seemed to be implied, though, that no matter how many times he tried, he would have screwed up something else that he hadn’t thought of.
It didn’t seem to me like he could have kept going back to try to get it right, like Groundhog Day. He could only go back to his blackout episodes from his childhood, and change the events that happened during that blackout. This was supposed to have been causing brain damage to the extent that his doctor was suprised that he still had motor function after the time Lenny killed Tommy. So if he kept going back to his blackouts time after time in order to try new ideas, he would apparently kill himself, hence the note he left before his final trip back via the home movie.
The biggest question that sticks in my mind after seeing it for the second time is: why did Evan have the blackout the first time in the kitchen and end up holding the knife? What traumatic event triggered this?
I agree. I was answering richardb’s question about whether he could go to the same episode more than once, which he did, to the camcorder scene.
Ah, good point. That would indeed limit the number of times he could change things.
I have a different impression about this. He said he wrote the note in case he wasn’t successful. If he wasn’t sucessful, there wouldn’t be any memory change, and his brain wouldn’t be affected. Presumably, if the projector idea didn’t work, he would have killed himself by his own hand, not having any way out. If he was successful, the timeline would have been changed, and there would be no note to find.
Still can’t figure this out. He was looking for a way to destroy the stick of dynamite, but when he did get ahold of the dynamite, he didn’t use the knife. Maybe running across it suddenly reminded him of the mysterious drawing of him standing over dead bodies with a knife, and this freaked him out?
The blackouts weren’t caused by traumatic events as you first suspect, but rather by Evan going back and changing things that happend. He blacks out because his future self took over his mind at that time…he usually just went back to the traumatic events because they stuck out most in his mind.
Are you sure that it wasn’t only the blackout periods of his life that he could go back to? Why did he mark every blackout in his journals with sticky notes after he discovered he could go back? Why was he so pissed at his mom when she didn’t bring him all of his journals in prison, and why did he pull that stunt where he stabbed that bald dude in the crotch and had his cellmate hold the door closed while he quickly exited by reading a journal that they had stolen?
Also, I think that he didn’t use the knife to destroy the blockbuster because he didn’t have it when he was near the blockbuster. Remember him coming back to his room with Lenny, still having no arms and saying “That didn’t work.”
Finally, I noticed when I watched it the second time, that the knife-weilding murderer in his drawing looked an awful lot like his dad…
BTW, clearly the “frat boy” scenario wasn’t “the perfect life” in his own opinion – he was transformed into the kind of jackass he despised in his “first life.” Thumper hated him, he was a careless student, etc. He was willing to live that life for Kayleigh but obviously he would not have chosen it on his own.
IMHO the blackout periods existed because they represented “blank” areas of memory – memories that had not happened yet – not because he was traumatized.
I was so relieved they didn’t try to end this movie on a Twilight Zone-esque “gotcha.”
Good film, surprisingly good. When I saw the trailer at ROTK it seemed like a concept that would be interesting, unless they REALLY screwed it up…and knowing Hollywood these days, that wasn’t much to hope for! So I was pleasantly surprised to see that, while not perfect, they didn’t really screw it up. Kinda wished that the changes had more global effects (such as, Ashton wakes up and they’re all speaking Russian) but I guess you can only take that so far before it becomes too comedic, a la that Simpsons Halloween episode.
Loved loved LOVED the ending. How often these days do you see the male lead say “FUCK OFF BITCH!” to the female lead, knowing it’s for her own good? At least since “Casablanca”, anyway. When he met her on the street years later, I was afraid they’d blown it, but thankfully they both kept walking. Phew!
Only major nitpick: “Massive hemorrhaging” is something you never EVER want to find in an MRI brain scan. Even minor bleeding is not, shall we say, conducive to life. Certainly, the doc should have been more than slightly nonplussed about it.
And I agree that stabbing his hands in art class should have had more widespread repercussions.
Best line of the whole movie. 
That’s really the only reason for it (as other people were asking) but it’s a good enough reason for me.
I just watched this movie today, and there is one plot hole that I noticed.
In the movie Evan has his first blackout when he draws the picture in class, his mother then takes him to the doctor who suggests that he start keeping a jurnal. Later in the movie we find out that the blackouts are caused by when future Evan jumps back in time, after he learned he could do that by reading the jurnals.
The question is, if Evan started writing the jurnals because of a blackout, how did he have a blackout without the jurnals?
Please excuse my crappy spelling, I am well aware that I can not spell.