#10. The Butterfly Effect 3 : Revelations [2009]

" Death Repeats Itself "



USA[90m] Directed by : Seth Grossman Written by : Holly Brix Music : Adam Balazs Cinematography : Dan Stoloff Starring : Chris Carmack, Rachel Miner, Sonya A. Avakian, Melissa Jones Release Date : January 09, 2009

Butterfly Effect: Revelation is a 2009 science fiction/horror film directed by Seth Grossman that is the third film in the Butterfly Effect franchise.The movie was filmed in Michigan and concluded filming in October 2008. It debuted as part of the lineup for After Dark Horrorfest III, a horror film festival held in January 2009. The film will be released on DVD on March 31, 2009.

Synopsis
Sam Reide (Chris Carmack) witnesses a woman killed, then wakes up in an ice-filled bathtub, his vitals being monitored by his sister Jenna (Rachel Miner). Sam can travel back to any time and location during his lifetime, needing only to concentrate on where and when he wishes to arrive. He has helped the local police capture criminals under the guise of being a psychic. We learn that Sam pays his sister's rent and buys her groceries, and that she rarely leaves the apartment and lives in squalor. That night, Elizabeth (Sarah Habel), the sister of Sam's murdered girlfriend Rebecca (Mia Serifino), arrives at Sam's apartment. She believes that the man about to be executed for her sister's murder, Lonnie Flennonds (Richard Wilkinson), is innocent, and she offers to pay Sam to find the real murderer. Sam turns her down, but goes to speak with the man who tutored him on time travel, Goldburg (Kevin Yon), who reminds him of the cardinal rules: he's not to alter his own personal past, nor travel in time with his body left unsupervised.

We learn that a fire that claimed the lives of Sam and Jenna's parents had claimed Jenna's life, but Sam altered time so that their parents died instead. After Goldburg's departure their bartender, Vicki (Melissa Jones), seductively offers Sam a buttery nipple; he and Vicki have sex, but upon seeing Rebecca's photo, he cannot continue. Sam changes his mind and agrees to help Elizabeth. He tries to help Lonnie without time-traveling, but Lonnie refuses, believing Sam to be the culprit. Frustrated, Sam travels back to June 1998. He first runs into a drunk Elizabeth, telling her to stay in her locked car. He goes into Rebecca's bedroom to find her already dead; while there, Elizabeth is attacked from her backseat. Sam returns to the present, to learn he no longer owns a car, is renting his couch to a roommate named Paco (Ulysses Hernandez), and no longer works for the police, instead being a discarded suspect for Rebecca's murder who has repeatedly asked for the case file.

In 1998 Lonnie had seen Rebecca and Sam talking, and didn't stop this time: as he was not at the murder scene, in this new present he is a wheelchair-bound lawyer. Sam visits Goldburg, who suggests he go back to the scene of the third murder and this time only observe. Sam also visits Jenna, who is significantly better off and living more cleanly; she refuses to help him. Sam travels back to September 2000 and witnesses the third victim, Anita Barnes (Chantel Giacalone), being attacked, only to learn it is her boyfriend attempting to cater to her rape fetish. He is discovered and her boyfriend's punch sends him back to the present, where now Sam is renting a couch from Paco, who is about to evict him for non-payment. Goldburg is missing, and Lonnie is now the third victim while Anita remains alive. Present-day Anita pepper-sprays him; escaping to Jenna's, she tells him that Goldburg was about to implicate him in the murders, and furthermore tells him she fears a future Sam is the murderer. Sam complains he is now "too stupid" to fix things; Jenna pinky-swears him to not time-travel anymore.

Drunk at the bar, he propositions Vicki, who is engaged in this timeline. After Sam leaves, the killer shows up and murders Vicki near an auto plant; her body is found by the police. As Sam left his receipt behind at the bar, he is hauled in by the police. Jenna extricates him; the police put a tail on him as he leaves. As he leaves, he takes Det. Glenn's (Lynch Travis) evidence notebook, which he uses to look at the scene of the crime and travel back to September 2004, before the bodies were found by the police. He returns to the present to find himself on Jenna's couch as she leaves for work, reminding him to clean up after himself and have dinner ready for her — their positions now effectively reversed from the beginning of the film. Sam returns to the auto plant, where the police lie in wait to arrest him. Sam convinces Det. Glenn to release him by telling him how his wife mistook him for M.C. Hammer on their first meeting. Visiting home, Sam accidentally inhales some burundanga flowers from Goldburg's greenhouse, and barely can haul himself into the bathtub before time-traveling back to the abandoned auto plant, where he finds a severely injured Goldburg, and, running for help, is felled by a foothold trap.

The killer approaches the trapped Sam, removing the mask as they approach to reveal ... Jenna, who can also time travel. She has an incestuous love for her brother, having killed the women either because she perceived them as rivals for Sam's affections or because they were new witnesses introduced by Sam's rescue attempts. Sam travels back in time to the day of the fire that killed his parents; instead of saving Jenna, he traps her in her room. He awakes in a new timeline where he had fallen in love with Elizabeth (not Rebecca), and he, Elizabeth, and their daughter Jenna (named after his now-dead sister) (Alexis Sturr) are pulling up to a family barbecue, where he is greeted by his now-living parents and a perfectly healthy Goldburg. The film closes as Sam's daughter puts her Barbie doll on the grill and smiles as it begins to melt.

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#7. Eden Log [2009]

France [Imperia Films/Bac Films/Magnolia]101m Directed by : Franck Vestiel Music by : Jerome Wiciak Cinematography : Thierry Pouget Starring : Clovis Cornillac, Vimala Pons Release Date : December 26, 2007 [France], February 13, 2009 [US]

Eden Log is a 2007 science fiction film directed and co-written by Franck Vestiel. The film was Vestiel's first as a director, who shot the entire film using only hand-held cameras. The story follows Tolbiac (Clovis Cornillac) after he wakes up naked and disoriented in an underground cave, not knowing how he arrived there. Reviews were generally positive towards the film, which received an aggregated score of 60% from Rotten Tomatoes. In North America, it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2008.

Synopsis
A man wakes up deep inside a cave. Suffering amnesia, he has no recollection of how he came to be here or of what happened to the man whose body he finds beside him. Tailed by a mysterious creature, he must continue through this strange and fantastic world. Enclosed, Tolbiac has no other option to reach the surface than to use REZO ZERO, secret observing cells in this cemetery-like abandoned mine. He embarks upon this journey guided by the roots of a plant, leading the way and the main subject of attention of the REZO.

This is the story of the rise of a forgotten man, sometimes informed by the archives of abandoned laboratories, which punctuate this subterranean network and at other times by his own strangely amplified instinct. During his search for the surface, Tolbiac must uncover the secret of what once lived in this network; but has this "mystery" truly left?



The film was Franck Vestiel's first as a director. Eden Log uses a muted palette. The film is shot with only hand-held cameras in underground locations 60 feet (18 m) below the surface, as well as in a sewer. A gray and blue multilevel set is used in Eden Log, which, according to Vestiel, was designed to "avoid the look of the usual science fiction future. The last thing I wanted was for Eden Log to fall into the trap of those science fiction films where the characters live in super-sterile, bathroom-like environments. And I did not want people to be able to date the film by identifying the technology, which is why I have no apparatuses, no dials, no buttons." The surrealistic landscapes of Eden Log were inspired by Vestiel's favorite films, such as Escape From New York and Dawn of the Dead, and comics and literature, such as Frank Miller's Daredevil and Screaming Metal.

Eden Log receives an aggregated score of 60% from Rotten Tomatoes, based on five reviews. The Toronto International Film Festival described the film as a "stunning sci-fi vision", in which Vestiel "created a decaying universe for his bewildered yet resourceful hero to explore". They noted that Eden Log appears to have been influenced by role-playing games and the works of Luc Besson, Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Darren Aronofsky, as well as channeling the "rich visual history of French comics, or bandes dessinées, from magazines like Métal Hurlant and its American counterpart, Heavy Metal". Chris Cabin of Film Critic credited the film for its first 20 minutes of attention-grabbing action, but notes that the journey that Tolbiac takes is "more suited that of a video game programmer than a young filmmaker". Cabin wrote that the film does not emotionally connect with the viewer, and he gave the film 1.5 out of 5 stars.Variety remarked that the film is "bold", despite rehashing some cinematic qualities and sound design, concluding that the film "the most bang for limited bucks, with an eye-popping finale.

Official Websites : France [http://www.bacfilms.com/site/edenlog]
US [http://www.sixshooterfilmseries.com/edenlog]

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