The Trigger Effect

Name: The Trigger Effect
Director: David Koepp
Released: 1996

David Koepp

1996

Synopsis

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.

Your Movie Library

Cast

Recommendations

80
TV Guide Magazine
A tightly scripted cautionary tale about what happens when the lights go down in Southern California, hiding behind a generic action-thriller title.
78
Austin Chronicle
Koepp's film examines the interconnections between man and the electronic society, and the terrors that are unleashed once those connections are severed, and does so in a wholly original and unnerving manner.
75
Entertainment Weekly
Until he wraps things up much too neatly and idealistically, Koepp puts together a sturdy and efficient thriller.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
A sleek, intelligent thriller.
70
Los Angeles Times
Despite conflicted circumstances, the cast is capable, but there's a feeling of loose ends, an overall lack of cohesiveness to this good-looking film. The Trigger Effect is on-target when it comes to the ills of modern society but is charged with ambivalence as to what makes a hero.
70
The New York Times
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.
63
ReelViews
To the extent that The Trigger Effect is intended as a tense, somewhat nerve-wracking thriller, it's adequate, and certainly better than the formula-driven likes of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.
60
Variety
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.