Best alternate reality movies you can stream right now

One of the most oft-repeated sentiments in stories involving time travel is that it’s better to learn to live with the past and be grateful for your present. Things, after all, could always be worse. But what if the trauma you suffered as a child is unthinkable? Shouldn’t you get a pass when it comes to the conventional time-travel rules? Not according to The Butterfly Effect. Ashton Kutcher stars in the thriller as Evan, a college student whose childhood trauma includes sexual abuse and almost being murdered by his own father. So when Evan discovers that reading his childhood journal somehow gives him the ability to return to the past and change what happened, he goes for it. But the more he does it, the more unpredictable alternate futures he creates — each one more disastrous than the one before it. Worse still, years of contradicting memories begin pulverizing his mind. While critics weren’t the biggest fans of The Butterfly Effect, audiences clearly parted ways with reviewers and helped pave the way for 2006’s The Butterfly Effect 2 and 2009’s The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations.