It's a fact: if an entire city had a prolonged blackout, some would not be able to handle it. Our lives are built around televisions, phones, radios, and other electrical devices. It's the sad truth but that's how it is, and without we would have no way of communicating with one another. Hopefully, people would not go to the extremes as the people in The Trigger Effect did, but it could happen.

And hopefully, we would be able to make intelligent choices, because the characters in The Trigger Effect never make an intelligent decision in the whole movie. None of the characters are really likable either, which is always a problem when you want the audience to feel for them. Elisabeth Shue's character is somewhat of a bitch and Kyle MacLachlan's is even worse. The most notable is Dermot Mulroney, but even he is nothing special.

I don't really know if there was any point to the making of The Trigger Effect; nothing really happened. They never explained the cause of the blackout (or stated exactly what it was), they didn't really do anything about the blackout, but past the first five minutes, I didn't really care anyway. It was peculiar as to why someone would go out onto the street, in the middle of the night, to check on a blackout that probably was caused by a storm. Was it just for dialogue? And then, why would people begin looting like crazy just because the power's out for a day? And how come those guys at the movie theater just happened to be in the exact same place as the main characters throughout the entire movie, including out in the middle of the countryside. It was just stupid, and a waste of time.

The Trigger Effect could have been something... If it were completely rewritten to actually have a point.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.