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Triggered
USA 2018
produced by Christopher Wesley Moore for CWM Entertainment
directed by Christopher Wesley Moore
starring Meredith Mohler, Jesse Dalton, Sam Furman, Keni Bounds, Arian Thigpen, Caitlyn Driscoll, Amanda Wyss, Alberto Meza, Kirsty Hatfield, Holly Bonney, Isabella Alberti, Chris Wesley, Mandy Kate Myers, Eric Riggs, Ava Grady, Cheryl Abernathy, George Mayronne, Hope Prybylski, Lantz Kuykendall, Denise Astorino Brown, Kaley Ball, David Jackson, Michael Kinslow, Erick Weeks, Jordan Boyd, Allison Gilbert Bennett, Claire Mayronne, Luke Mayronne
written by Christopher Wesley Moore, music by Luke Zwelsky
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Callee (Meredith Mohler) is a high school student desperate for
attention, but since she doesn't fit the classic pretty girl/cheerleader
ideals, she chooses to push her ideas of political correctness and of
gender fluidity on anyone - which basically isn't a bad thing to do, but
once you complain about non-Asian women wearing chopsticks in their hair,
calling it "cultural appropriation", and insist on using the
boy's room but can't see that male students might not be too happy about
it, you become a nuisance - and thus, Callee has very few friends ...
well, one, Ian (Jesse Dalton), whom she not so secretly has a crush on,
but who spurns her advances on grounds of being homosexual but sticks with
her like any best friend would. So eventually, when she kills school
beauty Lisa (Caitlyn Driscoll) in a mere accident, he helps her make it
look like all three of them were attacked by the local slasher, but he or
she only actually got Lisa. Finally, Callee gets the fame and recognition
she wanted - and Ian? Well, suddenly Lisa's ex Zac (Sam Furman) starts
noticing him, and it turns out Zac's a closet homosexual as well. So
happy ending for everybody? Not quite, as there actually is an actual
slasher roaming the town, and he or she's not all that happy about being
blamed for the murder of Lisa (s)he didn't commit - which pretty much
doesn't put Callee and Ian merely in the center of attention but also in
the crosshairs of a psycho. And what's more, one of Lisa's friends (Arian
Thigpen) has actually witnessed Lisa's murder and recorded it all on her
cellphone - but rather than going to the police, she decides to blackmail
Callee and Ian. And then there's also the fact that Callee, hearing about
Ian and Zac, suffers a fit of jealousy that might just trigger a rather
violent reaction - all of which makes up for a rather lethal cocktail ... Well,
one can't really deny that this film does draw some inspiration from the
late 1980s cult classic Heathers - but a) that's a pretty good
source of inspiration, and b) Triggered might borrow the high
school setting and a few motives from that movie but veers off into a very
different direction, like applying the slasher movie formula to its
narrative in a very unusual way and twisting and turning while spinning
its yarn like any good murder mystery would. And all the while, the film
is fueled by plenty of dark humour (which come to think of it is another
similarity with Heathers I can totally live with). And thanks to a
cleverly written script, a tight directorial effort and a solid cast, Triggered
comes across as a genre entry that's very entertaining in its own right
and will strike a chord with horror fans for sure!
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