August 30, 1996
David Koepp’s THE TRIGGER EFFECT is the last movie in this review series that I hadn’t seen before. It’s not one anybody seems to talk about, so I could’ve gotten away with skipping it. I’m glad I didn’t, though. I don’t think it’s good, but it’s deranged in a really odd way that I appreciate.
It opens with two coyotes playing tug-of-war with a dead animal, then howling, then walking past a power station. This is meant to encapsulate the movie because it’s about people not getting along during a power outage.
But for now the lights are on, and there’s a DePalma style tracking shot witnessing a chain of small conflicts between strangers at a mall: a drink spilled on a shirt, the person spelled on bumping into a lady and offending her boyfriend, etc. – and it’s a very unsettling intro because for one five minute shot we get this onslaught of characters and incidents where not one person ever reacts to anything in a way that seems natural to me. The culmination is in a movie theater lobby where a woman (Kerri Vickers) strolls past two long lines of customers, right up to the concession counter and just starts ordering. The person who was next in line, Raymond (Richard T. Jones, RENAISSANCE MAN), calls her on it, but she says, “Well, I didn’t see you” and goes back to ordering… so he leaves without buying anything. (read the rest of this shit…)
“Do I look disenchanted to you?”
