The Trigger Effect (1996)
Directed by David Koepp
A blackout leaves those affected to consider what is necessary, what is legal, and what is questionable, in order to survive in a predatory environment.
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What critics compared The Trigger Effect to
It’s not your typical Bay or Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) kind of disaster film, but something more cerebral, like “The Trigger Effect” (1996) if tamped down and made into mainstream pap.
The script never quite shows what makes him tick, but the way MacLachlan plays the role, he surely thinks he's entitled to something -- in this respect, The Trigger Effect echoes nothing so much as Falling Down, in which Michael Douglas played The White Guy Who Couldn't Take It Anymore.
There's a certain creative ambition in the notion of doing something like The Trigger Effect or Night of the Living Dead with a cast entirely made up of comedy stars poking fun at their own base human natures, monstrously exacerbated by privilege.
There's a little of "Outbreak" and a bit of "The Trigger Effect" here.
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That the man who wrote the likes of Death Becomes Her, Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible and Spider-Man (to name only a few) for other directors has forged a directing career on such fare as The Trigger Effect, Stir of Echoes and Secret Window has long caused many to wonder when Koepp might finally save something really worthwhile for himself.
"Secret Window" (2004), adapted from a Stephen King story, wasn't particularly revelatory, but Koepp's previous features -- the unjustly neglected "The Trigger Effect" (1996) and the eerie "Stir of Echoes" (1999) -- are wonderfully effective throwbacks to the smart scares found in the pre-blockbuster era of fantasy movies and on "The Twilight Zone."
Writer/director David Koepp has fashioned his filmmaking career out of taking genre chances with dicey material (“Secret Window,” “The Trigger Effect,” “Stir of Echoes”).
Like the rest of Koepp's directorial efforts (The Trigger Effect, Stir of Echoes and Secret Window), Ghost Town is smaller in scale than the often-gargantuan screenplays he writes for others.
Writer-director David Koepp (whose previous directorial efforts were the quirky thriller "The Trigger Effect" and "Stir of Echoes") tries to distract viewers with attention-grabbing camera moves and a pounding Philip Glass score but all they do is demonstrate the relative hollowness of the film that they are serving.
David Koepp, who adapted the screenplay from Stephen Kingâs novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, has done some fine work as both writer and director in the past (his 1996 paranoid thriller The Trigger Effect is an overlooked minor classic and his scripts for Carlitoâs Way and Panic Room are top-drawer to boot), but here he seems to have relied too much on Kingâs original story (voiceovers are rampant and frequently hilarious), and what was once borderline creepy is now merely borderline interesting.