"Triggered" rarely ever as witty or fun as it thinks it is

Triggered (2020)

As any “Friday the 13th” or “Final Destination” sequel has proven, there can be something unapologetically fun about just watching a group of characters get picked off one by one. “Triggered” wants to be a cleverly twisted every-(wo)man-for-themselves survival riff on a camp slasher flick. That is a concept with potential. Take the backstabbing, secret-harboring friends from “Unfriended” and throw them into a “Saw” situation crossed with “Battle Royale," and then occupy a horror-comedy lane. Director Alastair Orr (2017’s “House on Willow Street”) and writer David D. Jones don’t intend for any of this to be taken too seriously and just be a gratuitously bloody good time, but “Triggered” is rarely ever as witty or fun as it believes itself to be.

Nine high school friends reunite for a camping trip in the woods. Among them are leader Bobby (Michael Potter) and sort-of girlfriend Shea (Suraya Santos), bickering couple Ezra (Steven John Ward) and Cici (Kayla Privett), brainy Rian (Reine Swart) and drummer boyfriend PJ (Cameron R. Scott), single wallflower Erin (Liesel Ahlers), and a few others. Once the party is starting to wind down, the friends are gassed to sleep by Mr. Peterson (Sean Cameron Michael), the friends’ old science teacher and the father to one of their friends who died years before. When they wake up with bomb packs strapped to their chests, the gang concludes there is only one strategy: save your own skin by killing a friend and stealing their time, or just blow up when time runs out. 

One of the dummies, Kato (Russell Crous), sums up the situation best, “Now I know I had too much to drink because I’m in the middle of a dream where my high school science teacher stitched my ass into a metal vest, downloaded all the ‘Saw’ movies, bitched about millennials for a hot second, and then blew his fucking brains out.” One can appreciate the mean gusto behind “Triggered,” but the film's flip, juvenile shtick becomes kind of obnoxious pretty quickly. Introductions of these stereotypes around the campfire are swift; too swift, in fact, that it is initially hard to keep straight who is paired up with who. By the time we’re able to tell Arrogant Bro from Other Arrogant Bro, there is no possible way to track the geography of the woods, and not knowing where characters are in relation to others dilutes the film’s urgency. These characters could just be running in circles for all we know, and as one of them says, “It all looks the same!” 

As revelations about some of these so-called true friends float to the surface—and alliances are turned back on—and make Peterson’s murder game a lot easier for some, we are forced to root for a less-annoying character than the other eight. If nearly everyone sucks, including a closeted character, how can we care who lives and who dies? There’s just not a lot of pleasure to be derived from hating, or loving to hate, any of these unpleasant characters, who are ready to be made disposable anyway. The actors are all certainly gung-ho, too, but generally amateurish performances can’t quite support the film’s over-the-top approach, and one of the actors’ South African accent just keeps slipping out without a care in the world. Self-aware pop-culture references get spouted, even when they’re wrong (“You got all Jason Bateman on me!” “You mean Patrick Bateman, you idiot. From ‘American Psycho.’”), and dialogue sometimes tries too hard to be off-color (“I’m not soft, I’m as hard as a priest in a playground!”). “Triggered” is too dopey to be offensive, but even for an unpretentiously dopey slice-and-dicer, we have seen better before. 

Grade: C

Samuel Goldwyn Films is releasing “Triggered” (90 min.) on digital and on demand November 6, 2020.