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The painful lesson that the characters in the film learn is found in the words of Jesus: "You reap what you sow" and "they that live by the sword, die by the sword." Evil gives birth to evil. |
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TRIGGER EFFECT
1996
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By David Bruce |
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| Box Office Magazine says: This is an "apocalyptic tale of what happens when the lights go out." |
Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Elisabeth Shue and Dermot Mulroney.
Directed and written by David Koepp.
Produced by Michael Grillo.
A Gramercy release. Thriller.
Rated R for language and some violence.
Running time: 98 min. |
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Directed by screenwriter David Koepp, who co-wrote the script for Jurassic Park and penned the blockbuster Mission: Impossible. This is a very dark film that, thankfully, could never happen. When disasters strike, people tend to help each other, not shoot each other as this film suggests. The opening scene shows two wolves eating a dog and then the camera pans up to reveal the city. Koepp wants us to know it is a dog eat dog world.
What Koepp is trying to demonstrate, in an exaggerated way, is the fact that evil breeds evil. Evil may begin as an unintentional innocent act of oversight or thoughtlessness which can be perceived as a deliberate act of unkindness and can consequently give birth to revengeful and spiteful attitudes and eventually deliberate hostile actions against others. The film begins with small incidents of impolite behavior (evil), which compounds and spreads until the whole town is affected. This is characterized by a blackout that engulfs the whole town.
The painful lesson that the characters in the film learn is found in the words of Jesus: "You reap what you sow" and "they that live by the sword, die by the sword." Evil gives birth to evil.
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A well-off suburban couple, Matt and Annie (MacLachlan and Shue) are forced to react to this crisis. Suddenly, money and possessions count for nothing. They are still adjusting to adult life and a new infant daughter. Their house is broken into, and Matt and his friend Joe (Dermot Mulroney) chase the thief into the street, where he is shot and killed by a neighbor. Matt lies to the cops about what really happened to protect his neighbor. He is so blind to his own sinful situation that, when the police arrive, he asks, "Is it bad out there?" "Out where?" is the officer's reply. Now confronted with the evil around them and their realization of their own wickedness, they run. But, it of course goes with them. Their sins only result in death and destruction. Salvation, they realize, was never in the material things they had worked so hard to achieve. In fact, they willingly reduce themselves to an essential few things and leave the city. But their own evil goes with them and ultimately nearly destroys them. The tables are turned by acts of kindness that bring life and peace back to the city and to the couple. Again, the law of reaping and sowing. Kindness begets kindness and can change the world. Just as God's act of kindness in Christ Jesus changed history.
Trigger Effect © 1996 Universal City Studios Productions, Inc. / Amblin Entertainment
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The Awfulness of Sin.
HENRY DRUMMOND.
The awfulness of sin comes not wholly from the fact that it is a disobedience of God, but as well from the certainty that it is a doing of violence to the soul itself in the loss of power, the decay of love, the enfeebling of will and the general atrophy of the nature. The thing effected by our indulgence is not alone the book of final judgment, but the present fabric of the spirit. |
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