The Trigger Effect

Infobox Film
name = The Trigger Effect


caption = Theatrical release poster
director = David Koepp
producer = Laurie MacDonald
Walter F. Parkes
writer = James Burke
David Koepp
starring = Kyle MacLachlan
Elisabeth Shue
Dermot Mulroney
music = James Newton Howard
cinematography = Newton Thomas Sigel
editing = Jill Savitt
distributor = Gramercy Pictures
Universal Pictures
Amblin Entertainment
released = August 30, 1996
runtime = 94 min.
country = flagicon|USA
language = English
budget = $8 million
gross = $3,594,848
imdb_id = 0117965

"The Trigger Effect" is a 1996 movie starring Kyle MacLachlan, Elisabeth Shue and Dermot Mulroney.

Plot

The story starts off with a young married couple, Annie and Matthew, played by Elizabeth Shue and Kyle MacLachlan, returning home from the movies to find their infant child (being cared for by a babysitter) screaming with a high temperature and an ear ache. The father calls the doctor, who promises to phone in a prescription to the pharmacist the following day.

During the night the neighborhood wakes up due to a blackout. The baby is still ill. The father goes to the pharmacist the next day, but is unable to get the required medicine due to the blackout preventing the doctor from phoning in the prescription. The father then steals the medicine when the pharmacist is not looking.

Chaos ensues due to the blackout, so the father and his brother, Joe, played by Dermot Mulroney, decide to buy a gun. An intruder breaks into the couple's house during the night, and the two brothers manage to chase him out of the house, where the neighbor shoots the intruder. The neighbors then conspire to cover up the fact that the deceased intruder did not actually have a gun.

More chaos occurs, so the family and the brother decide to flee to the wife's parent's house. They do not have enough fuel to travel the whole way, so they stop by an abandoned car hoping to siphon some. A man is lying in the backseat. Joe notices that the man has a hand gun, so heads back to the car to get the shotgun. Joe aims the rifle at the man to try and scare him off, but the man shoots him and steals the car.

Matthew then heads off to a nearby farmhouse to try and get help for his family. The man occupying the house refuses to help him initially, as he does not trust him. Matthew collects the shotgun and returns to the house, hoping to steal the car. Matthew breaks into the house to get the car keys, and a stand off ensues between him and the owner. The owner eventually agrees to help Matthew. The owner and his young daughter drive for help...

The movie then suddenly ends, as order is restored.

Cast

*Kyle MacLachlan as Matthew Kay
*Elisabeth Shue as Annie Kay
*Dermot Mulroney as Joe
*Richard T. Jones as Raymond
*Michael Rooker as Gary

Trivia

The story is partly inspired by the classic "The Twilight Zone" (1959) episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", which depicts the denizens of the street slowly becoming crazy after a power failure. In fact, in the film's production notes, Matthew and Annie live on the corner of Maple and Willoughby (another classic TZ episode, "A Stop at Willoughby"), obvious allusions to "The Twilight Zone".

Additional inspiration for the film was drawn from an episode of historian James Burke's series Connections. An episode entitled 'The Trigger Effect' dealt with the ways in which societies become increasingly dependent on their technology, and vulnerable to collapse when that technology fails.

'...Any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to collapse for an hour, for a day, or however long. That's when you find out the extent to which you are reliant on technology and don't even know it. That's when you see that it's so interdependent, that if you take one thing away, the whole thing falls down and leaves you with nothing.'

External links

*