The Trigger Effect

I love Elizabeth Shue. Once I saw her on the cover of the video box, I had to get this film. But my wife said that if I ever rent such a "senseless, pointless, useless waste of two hours" again, I'll have to find a new wife to watch it with.

Our society is so dependent on electricity so that when there is a blackout we despair. We find it hard to understand how people survived without the light switch, the TV, the refrigerator. The Trigger Effect is about such an occurence, but whereas our electricity usually comes back in a matter of hours, this movie's characters have to survive in the black for days. It is an interesting premise but it's horribly handled.

The characters we are shown are boring and two dimensional. An uneventful love triangle begins between the three leads which leads to nowhere. There are some interesting parts to the movie but it's let down by it's small budget. This movie demanded some cutting edge movie making, it fails to deliver. This could and should have been a much more (dare I say) violent picture. It's theme was that of man's devolution back into nature after it loses its use of technology. So we expect some nasty events to occur. It never happens.

A movie like this should have left the moviegoer with questions. How would you react in such a situation? Instead it only leaves us with a gaping mouth and a statement to the filmmakers. Stop ruining good ideas!!

One of those movies that could have been good, if Alfred Hitchcock was still alive. Everybody was in a bad mood anyway if the opening scenes were anything to go by. The opening scenes were good, by the way, which was one reason I kept watching, but to no avail. I agree, it gets worse as it goes along, as if the writer had one good idea then didn't know where to go with it, so it didn't go anywhere. If you're about to rent this movie anyway, think about why you've never heard of it.

The reason why I purchased this movie was because last year we had a power outage that lasted 2+ days for us. Some people in our area didn't have power for almost a week. I heard about the movie from a friend of mine that suggested it due to the event that we experienced. Due to us getting the movie shortly after the experience, I found it to be very entertaining and very close to what could happen to "civil" people if they were hit with such a situation for an extended period of time. It hit close to home for me and made me think about how dependent we our of good ole fashion electricity. If you want to see a movie that will give you a slice of what could happen when the power goes out then you will definitely want to see this film. Just think if your city goes without power. You then have no TV, you can't use your debit card, you have no heat or air conditioning depending on the season, no computer, no light at night, and that's just the beginning. When we had our outage we could at least get in the car and go to the mall and have lunch or whatever but if the WHOLE city goes down for a significant amount of time, then there's definitely going to be trouble on the way. And that's what this movie is basically about. Good, entertaining, and recommended for all...

The opening sequence of how other people effect the flow of our natural day opens up the idea to the audience that like the Trigger Effect, other people during the course of our "normal" days can end up making us go crazy and even doing some drastic stuff. The Trigger Effect opens up "Touch of Evil" style with a wonderful sequence of no name actors who end up playing a huge role on the story line of what the Trigger Effect is. Almost by mistake, we are brought into the lives of the main characters, and from there the story begins. The movie holds some amazing moments and some excellent scenes with the 3 leads. Still, the movie falls short with an ending, nobody wanted to see. A thriller that builds and builds and builds and goes nowhere. The struggle between the characters grow and then end up going off on a detour and nothing else. Sad, the movie could have been a timeless story how the slightest things in our day could end up killing ourselves if not killing others. The story was terrific and could have been an excellent movie. But overall, the movie is worth watching just for the moments it has.