The Trigger Effect (1996)

One of my all time favorites.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This movie illustrates a solid reason why prepping for bad situations is a good idea. It only takes two days of the power being off for people to begin turning on each other. If everyone had been prepared, that wouldn't have been an issue. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that everyone should build a bunker in their basement stocked with 20 years worth of food. But a two week supply of food, water and a weapon with which to defend yourself could be the difference between life and death in a situation like this.So, all in all, a mediocre movie with a strong message. It never hurts to be prepared.

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.

How tenuous is man's hold on civilization when survival becomes an issue? When the lights go out and stay out for several days, suburbanites Matthew and Annie learn the hard way that man is "by nature" a predatory creature.Before "Stir of Echoes", David Koepp made "The Trigger Effect". Apparently critics liked it, but the film bombed, and is not sitting very high on IMDb. Respectfully, I disagree with the critics. The film was just so blunt. People are rude to each other. I get that. There was such potential in this film but it seems to have just gone the easiest route.Most disappointing is the use of the cast. Kyle MacLachlan is amazing, and he is wasted in this film. I wasn't aware he could play a jerk, but now I know. Michael Rooker is also one of my favorites. And yet, neither one seems to be able to save this mess. I thought great actors could save just about anything, but I would be wrong.

I thought this was a tightly-made survival piece and was surprised by the number of downbeat reviews. Good grief, people, this was hardly a bad film!It might be a case of herd-negativity; one person reads a bad review, gets a bias, and so on. That is, unless they saw an edited version on TV that was too trimmed-down. A TV viewing should always be noted by reviewers, since it often ruins movies by cutting crucial scenes.This movie starts with a strong sequence about random people getting on each other's nerves, with a sense of general foreboding that something bad is looming, although you knew that going in.Then, it progresses quite seamlessly toward a societal breakdown scenario, without giving away too much information on the cause. That keeps the mystery going, which many films fail to do by letting the cat fully out of the bag. It's also presented from the viewpoint of a handful of people, not some national command center with the usual political bickering.The tension between the married couple goes along well with the growing sense of general insecurity. I didn't find it contrived at all. At no point in the film was I able to guess how it was going to turn out, which is the way it would be in a survival situation. The ending could have gone either way.Yes, there were some logical holes, but nothing truly glaring. It was entertaining enough to not inspire second-guessing.I'd already seen the James Burke "Connections" episode of the same title which inspired this film. They gave it a visual nod early on, and that made it all the more entertaining.I think "The Trigger Effect" is well worth your time unless some negative reviewer turned you against it, which is ironically how people behave in mobs when order breaks down!