What happens when the precious technology upon which we have become so dependent breaks down? That is the question posed by writer David Koepp in this grimly prophetic and unsettling thriller about a neighbourhood under siege. The scenario is straight forward enough, although Koepp deftly manages to work a couple of neat spins and plot twists into the material to keep audiences slightly off balance.

One weekend a mysterious power blackout hits Los Angeles, cutting off the phone system as well as the electrical system, causing widespread chaos and panic. The tension rises as frightened citizens buy up powerful weapons in the gun shops and settle down to defend their property from looters. Koepp is interested in exploring how the behaviour of one person gradually impacts on others, like a stone thrown into a pond sends out ripples, but rather than explore the madness gripping the city as a whole, he concentrates on one family, whose slow disintegration is representative of the wider breakdown of a volatile society on the brink of anarchy.

The film begins innocuously enough with a long tracking sequence that explores how one minor incident in a shopping mall - a waiter spilling coffee on a man's suit - continues on into a potentially ugly scene inside a movie house as one disgruntled patron continues to discuss the event to the disgust of nearby patrons. This situation is just a precursor of what happens on a larger scale when the blackout becomes the trigger for widespread chaos and a frightening breakdown of normal values. Several key characters paths cross unknowingly throughout the film, although they will again meet later with tragic consequences.

Matt (Kyle MacLachlan) and his wife Annie (Oscar nominee Elisabeth Shue, again playing a more hard edged dramatic role) are a young married couple whose already shaky relationship is put to the test during the crisis. Matt loses many of his moral scruples when he is forced to steal drugs from a pharmacy for their sick daughter. Then Joe (Dermot Mulroney, from Copycat, etc), a carpenter friend of the family, comes to visit and is invited to stay until the end of the blackout. There is a sense of claustrophobic tension to the scenes inside Matt and Annie's house as the relationship between the three friends becomes more ambivalent and charged with an electric sexual undercurrent.

Later an intruder disturbs the family and after a violent confrontation which seems to encapsulate the madness that has gripped the neighbourhood, Matt decides that they should drive across the country to visit Annie's parents and escape the nightmare of a city slowly escalating out of control. Of course, petrol and rations will be in short supply, the roads are just as chaotic with hundreds of people also fleeing the city, and the unpredictable situation is tense with paranoia and suspicion and ominously ripe with the potential for ugly confrontations.

Koepp, who scripted the blockbusters Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible, also turns his hand to directing his script here and makes a quite auspicious debut. Koepp demonstrates that he has learned his lessons well watching veteran directors such as Spielberg and De Palma at work, and he draws good performances from his small but impressive stars. MacLachlan gives a grimly intense performance here as a normal, middle class executive who is pushed to the edge by a situation he can neither comprehend nor control. Shue is more restrained, but delivers a solid performance, while Mulroney is strong in a more subtly ambiguous role as the enigmatic but capable Joe.

The Trigger Effect is a slow boiling, tautly constructed thriller and Koepp continues to build on the uneasy atmosphere until the very end, which is, unfortunately a little too pat and leaves a few questions unanswered.

© 1996-97 Greg King / Used With Permission