X
- 1996
- R
- Gramercy Pictures (I)
- 1 h 34 m
- 1996
- R
- Gramercy Pictures (I)
- 1 h 34 m
Summary A blackout leaves those affected to consider what is necessary, what is legal, and what is questionable, in order to survive in a predatory environment.
Directed By: David Koepp
Written By: James Burke, David Koepp
- 1996
- R
- Gramercy Pictures (I)
- 1 h 34 m
- 1996
- R
- Gramercy Pictures (I)
- 1 h 34 m
The Trigger Effect
66
6.1
Where to Watch
Summary A blackout leaves those affected to consider what is necessary, what is legal, and what is questionable, in order to survive in a predatory environment.
Directed By: David Koepp
Written By: James Burke, David Koepp
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 19 Critic Reviews
66
74% Positive
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
26% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 19 Critic Reviews
66
74% Positive
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
26% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
A tightly scripted cautionary tale about what happens when the lights go down in Southern California, hiding behind a generic action-thriller title.
Writer-director David Koepp (Carlito's Way, Jurassic Park) certainly knows how to hold an audience's attention. [30 Aug 1996, p.15]
The Trigger Effect is a smarter-than- average thriller that proves David Koepp can direct films as well as write them. [30 Aug 1996, p.F1]
Directed with a spare look and exceptional crispness and precision, The Trigger Effect ultimately falls back on the familiar, especially in its banal ideas of how Matt and Annie are changed by their experience. But during the three-day emergency that it describes, this cleverly made film sustains a spooky intensity and an insinuating, utterly confident style.
The Trigger Effect asks some important questions about society's increasing reliance on technology (and how we take the high-tech infrastructure of daily life for granted), but the questions are wrapped in a bleak, humorless allegory about alienation and rage. [30 Aug 1996, p.03]
David Koepp's writing-helming bow is a bleak, highly stylized view of modern civilization. While The Trigger Effect maintains a potent mood of postmodern dread, even its proponents will be wondering what all the queasy fuss was about.
Once the movie settles down to story, it turns out to play like an extended Twilight Zone episode that merely reiterates the theme of the first few minutes: that man is fundamentally a beast and he must struggle endlessly against his own worst instincts and that each victory over those instincts is merely provisional.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 7 User Ratings
6.1
29% Positive
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
71% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 7 User Ratings
6.1
29% Positive
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
71% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
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