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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.

The Trigger Effect is a movie I'm not proud to like, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't. It wasn't a fantastic thriller, but it shouldn't get the beating it's getting on IMDb, Netflix, and every other review site. The acting isn't phenomenal, the plot isn't much, but the events in the film keep you at least interesting and hoping for the best. In the long run, The Trigger Effect is not the worst thing to come out of movies ever.

Sometimes, I believe, when a movie is panned by critics and moviegoers, a film gets bad reviews by everyone whether they like it or not. I looked on the IMDb Bottom 100 before writing this review, and thought, there's got to be one person out there that likes some of these films. I scanned about twenty, and the twenty I picked had no review above two out of ten. My point; not everyone can hate a movie. It can't be so bad no one likes it. This is kind of how I feel with this film and the 1996 comedy Bio-Dome which I found to be an entertaining film. The only difference with The Trigger Effect is I could find someone who liked Bio-Dome. I have yet to find someone that (honestly) admits they like The Trigger Effect.

The film has no real plot. It takes place in Southern California where our two protagonists reside. Matt (Kyle MacLachlan) and Annie (Elizabeth Shue) return home from the movies to find their infant screaming with an ear ache. Matt calls a doctor who promises to have a prescription filled by morning. In the middle of the night, the neighbors wake to find a the town has blacked out. Matt arrives at the pharmacy to find out the doctor didn't call in the prescription, so he resorts to stealing the medicine for the baby.

Matt's brother Joe (Dermot Mulroney) arrives at the house to convince the couple to buy a gun for security since the blackout is causing very strange behavior amongst the town. When purchasing the gun, the four come to the consensus that they must take a trip to wife's parent's house. Soon enough, all hell breaks loose.

The film is no masterpiece, but it shouldn't get the beating it is taking on the web now. It's a very least intriguing. You want to know what happens to these innocent people. You want to follow them through this journey through hell. As most of these events occur, they trigger another thing to happen (obviously why the film's title is what it is). Clearly the person behind this idea wanted no light at the end of the tunnel. Just like the film Where the Heart Is or The Quiet, they wanted no light at the end of the tunnel.

Upon it's release, it grossed a mere $1,887,791, and ranked 12th at the Box Office. It came up very short compared to it's $8,000,000 budget. It went on to gross around $3,000,000 in it's entirety, and lead on to never being spoken about again. While I think in no means it should be praised, it should at least be recognized for doing the job it did. It didn't want to be bad, but then again no movie does. It just showed it's limitations on screen, and nothing more. It doesn't want to be anything more than it's budget allows. It's a good thing and a bad thing simultaneously.

Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Elisabeth Shue, and Dermot Mulroney. Directed by: David Koepp.

A power blackout sweeps across America leading to fear which slowly manifests itself into suspicion : Who will you be able to trust if the lights don't come back on ? That's the idea behind THE TRIGGER EFFECT , a film that on the surface resembles the plot of a novel by John Wyndham or John Christopher but as so very , very many people on this page have screamed from the roof tops this isn't a movie that makes the best of a great idea

The film starts with a sequence that can best be described as " Robert Altman directing the opening shot of SUPERMAN 3 " which is meant as a compliment to Robert Koepp . as the story continues we're quickly introduced to the characters of Matthew and Annie Kay who have a baby . They're visited by their friend Joe and then disaster strikes when the electricity runs out and shows no signs of returning . Get ready for danger

On second thoughts don't get ready for danger . There's something about this scenario that I can't quite pout my finger on . Maybe it's to do with the scenario which is credible but the actions of the characters aren't . Would a long lasting power cut lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it ? Possibly since everyone went on a looting rampage during the New York blackout of the late 1970s and let us not forget the mass panic caused by reports of rapes , murders and other assorted evil after Hurricane Katrina but even so I was not convinced that a power cut would lead to a post apocalypse scenario , it's not like the population has been rendered blind by a meteorite shower ( DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS ) or a worldwide famine is in progress ( THE DEATH OF GRASS ) or a nuclear war has happened ( Insert your most depressing Nuclear holocaust movie here ) . Perhaps I should point out that THE TRIGGER EFFECT probably isn't a post apocalypse type movie so if you're expecting 28 DAYS LATER you're in for a rude awakening , this is more of a slow burning drama where characters seem to be making mountains out of mole hills . By trying to be realistic it ends up being unrealistic . I'm sure most people would nonchantley sit on their behinds in this type of situation rather glad that their quarterly electricity bill would lower than usual . Hell the police are still driving around arresting people during a blackout , do you understand what I'm saying about a lack of credibility ?

I have criticised the characters but to be honest I think the problem lies with Koepp's casting more than his writing . I found Kyle Maclachlan rather wimpy as Matthew . I guess the point was that adversity can lead to wimps turning into violent anti-heroes but I was never convinced by his performance while the rest of the cast failed to make any type of impression on me at all

All in all this is a very disappointing contribution to speculative fiction . Let me just repeat that I doubt if it's intended to be an out and out grim depressing story of man fighting to survive , it's more of a drama about how reliant we are on both electricity and each other but the story never reaches its full potential which is a great shame

This morning, as I perused the IMDB bottom 100, I realized that my own personal worst movie ever wasn't there...The Trigger Effect. Now, in retrospect, this was a harsh assessment to make as a teenager, but I still haven't seen anything else -- and this is after YEARS of MST3K -- that has compared to this. A Rod Serling premise delivered with Ed Wood execution -- this was an absolutely pitiful waste of celluloid and a couple of generally decent actors. The Trigger Effect is boring and lame, feeble and implausible, derivative and lousy. It doesn't even qualify in the "so good, it's bad genre"... it's just bad, which is why I rank it below about a hundred other old sci-fi or spy films that at least aspired to a lower standard. The Trigger Effect aims to be a thought-provoking thriller and isn't anything close. Has anyone else noticed that David Koepp (who wrote and directed this, in addition to penning bad scripts for The Lost World and Snake Eyes, to name just two) is the worst well-paid screenwriter in Hollywood?

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!!