The Trigger Effect (1996)

I enjoyed this movie a lot, and I thought it was a great take on how people would behave when confronted with highly unusual circumstances. The storytelling and writing I enjoyed quite a lot. The one thing I thought could have had an improvement was the acting, which could have been a bit better.I am seeing this movie is marked as 1996. What's weird is that I thought this movie could have been in the 80's or older. The characters just sort of acted... odd like that. It's hard to explain. Maybe wooden at times. If older movies seem a little cheesy that way, this movie may have been a little that way.I thought they did a good job with what they did with a fantastic story though. Perhaps the main guy could have been cast a little better.

The lights go out in the city in the middle of the night. Matthew (Kyle MacLachlan) and Annie Kay (Elisabeth Shue) are a suburban couple with a sick baby. Matthew is somewhat of a door mat. He struggles to get medicine for his sick baby. Their irreverent friend Joe (Dermot Mulroney) arrives. The guys buy a rifle to protect against looting. Annie throws it into the pool. That night, they chase a prowler out into the street where a neighbor shoots him. They decide to leave their cul-de-sac and drive to Annie's parents. On the road, they face their own darkness.From the moment it starts with the loud-mouthed black people in the movie theater, this movie keeps pushing buttons. It's annoyance at its height. It has the gun issue when anti-gun still has a constituent. Society falls apart so quickly for no reason that the movie feels completely fake. The paranoia and selfishness is dialed all the way to 11 right from the start. They leave their home for a relatively flimsy reason. The movie does find a good place to end but it's a long bumpy unrealistic road.

What would you do if there was no kind of power, electricity in your city and you needed to do stuff, solve problems away? How people, society in general would react in such chaotic situation where nothing works? "The Trigger Effect" unique power is in touching such thoughtful matter that should be deeply thought in several possibilities. Too bad director/writer David Koepp ("Jurassic Park", "Secret Window") only dwindles in a soft "Twilight Zone" scheme pretending to be serious enough to make us fully interested. It works on a minor level of entertainment, due to the lack of brainy ideas. For the most part, it's a little depressing, somewhat ridiculous and strangely annoying.It begins in a dull presentation of characters where three main characters, a couple (Kyle MacLachlan and Elisabeth Shue) and a guy (Richard T. Jones) are introduced in all sorts of confusion while gathered in a movie theater. Only in the 1990's we can think of small misunderstandings happening with people accidentally stumbling on other people causing such disturbance and heated little arguments that seems to lead towards aggression. We in the 21st Century are somewhat more aware of people, that we never know who they might be and we avoid conflict in the best possible way unless if inevitable. One small push and those characters need to curse, start a fight over pointless matters. But, they were together when the power went down in the room, then returned and by the end of the day, it will fail again, this time for a long stressful time, no answers given.The couple's problem is finding medicine for their baby who's having some health issues. Breaking point for the father is to steal the medicine of a drugstore amidst the chaos and after fighting with the pharmacist simply because the guy "didn't like him" after (again!) small discussions. Their only assistance comes from a friend (Dermot Mulroney) who makes sure they're safe due to the violence threats, riots and robbery happening in the small town after the energy disaster. No news, no information, nothing is said about the incident and the situation gets worse by the hour. Another breaking point comes when a robber gets killed after trying to steal things from the couple's house, starting some deep ethical questions in our heads.The movie's major weakness is in having a weak character as the figure we're supposed to root for. It's not a case of bad acting since Kyle is quite good in it; the problem is that it was too annoying, and far exaggerated all the time he had to take some different action than he used to take. Doesn't convince. Also, all the trouble presented by Koepp that society would rise into pandemonium simply because they're stuck without power was far too one-sided, simplistic. He only touched the surface of the problem and that's it. And when he creates the problem it isn't all that interesting to see, in fact it's too damn unbelievable. The whole road situation and how they deal with Michael Rooker character were ridiculous, almost killed the movie. And his character should've been presented earlier in the movie and we should have the right to know his motivations for doing all what he does, menacing people. But no, he's just there to surprise us with what can be surprising since he always plays the same role of menacing tough guy.If we don't get stuck with the negative aspects of "The Trigger Effect" we can enjoy it because of the proposition given and the actors working on it. Those who hated the movie for its acting or lack of a good story are a little wrong about it. Fine, it's not the best work of many of the stars present in here but it's not that bad. Hands down as best acting to Bill Smitrovich playing MacLachlan's friendly and helpful neighbor. He's a great character actor you recognize for countless films, never knows the name but here he makes his presence quite notable, specially after the robbery incident. Best character of the movie, it's because of him the film gets more gripping and more questionable when it comes to judge people's actions amidst such strange turmoil of events.Not the best or the worst, it's right in the middle. A little mediocre but positively watchable specially on a night time. 6/10

A year ago, the downtown core of the city I live in experienced a power outage, and even though it just lasted several hours, people in my neighborhood were already walking around outside somewhat bewildered, not used to having no electricity. So I found most of the events of "The Trigger Effect" pretty believable. I could believe the bad actions of many of the characters, and what I appreciated about the portrayal of *all* the character who do bad things is that the movie gives each of these characters *some* humanity - they are not totally evil people. I was kept interested in seeing where the characters would all end up at the end of the movie. A couple of quibbles, however: I thought the relationship of the man who joins with the couple early on was not explained enough (what WAS his relationship with the characters?) and not concluded with a satisfying conclusion. And the final scene, that (obviously) jumps significantly ahead of time, leaves the viewer hungry for some kind of explanations. Not a great movie, but will keep you fairly captivated throughout.