I thought this was a tightly-made survival piece and was surprised by the number of downbeat reviews. Good grief, people, this was hardly a bad film!
It might be a case of herd-negativity; one person reads a bad review, gets a bias, and so on. That is, unless they saw an edited version on TV that was too trimmed-down. A TV viewing should always be noted by reviewers, since it often ruins movies by cutting crucial scenes.
This movie starts with a strong sequence about random people getting on each other's nerves, with a sense of general foreboding that something bad is looming, although you knew that going in.
Then, it progresses quite seamlessly toward a societal breakdown scenario, without giving away too much information on the cause. That keeps the mystery going, which many films fail to do by letting the cat fully out of the bag. It's also presented from the viewpoint of a handful of people, not some national command center with the usual political bickering.
The tension between the married couple goes along well with the growing sense of general insecurity. I didn't find it contrived at all. At no point in the film was I able to guess how it was going to turn out, which is the way it would be in a survival situation. The ending could have gone either way.
Yes, there were some logical holes, but nothing truly glaring. It was entertaining enough to not inspire second-guessing.
I'd already seen the James Burke "Connections" episode of the same title which inspired this film. They gave it a visual nod early on, and that made it all the more entertaining.
I think "The Trigger Effect" is well worth your time unless some negative reviewer turned you against it, which is ironically how people behave in mobs when order breaks down!
It might be a case of herd-negativity; one person reads a bad review, gets a bias, and so on. That is, unless they saw an edited version on TV that was too trimmed-down. A TV viewing should always be noted by reviewers, since it often ruins movies by cutting crucial scenes.
This movie starts with a strong sequence about random people getting on each other's nerves, with a sense of general foreboding that something bad is looming, although you knew that going in.
Then, it progresses quite seamlessly toward a societal breakdown scenario, without giving away too much information on the cause. That keeps the mystery going, which many films fail to do by letting the cat fully out of the bag. It's also presented from the viewpoint of a handful of people, not some national command center with the usual political bickering.
The tension between the married couple goes along well with the growing sense of general insecurity. I didn't find it contrived at all. At no point in the film was I able to guess how it was going to turn out, which is the way it would be in a survival situation. The ending could have gone either way.
Yes, there were some logical holes, but nothing truly glaring. It was entertaining enough to not inspire second-guessing.
I'd already seen the James Burke "Connections" episode of the same title which inspired this film. They gave it a visual nod early on, and that made it all the more entertaining.
I think "The Trigger Effect" is well worth your time unless some negative reviewer turned you against it, which is ironically how people behave in mobs when order breaks down!