Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Triggered’ on Hulu, Another Movie Where Pals Are Forced To Kill Each Other

Not to be confused with the writings of Donald J. Trump’s large adult son, Triggered (Hulu) is a South African horror-comedy entry that delivers an ultimatum to its group of young friends, who all harbor a dicey history of secrets and lies: kill each other, or die by vest.

TRIGGERED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Nine friends are having an impromptu reunion at a campsite outside the small town where they attended high school. It’s been a few years since those halcyon days, and they’ve all taken different paths. Bobby (Michael Lawrence Potter) has landed a well-paid executive position right out of college. Rian (Reine Swart) is graduating from M.I.T, but is also still with her high school sweetheart, musician and lovable fuckup PJ (Cameron Scott). Kato (Russell Crous) was the drug source back then and dealt in college, too, but now swears that’s all in the past. And quiet Erin (Liesl Ahlers) is still hauling around emotional baggage from the death of her boyfriend Caleb. See, back in high school, Caleb overdosed on MDMA from Kato’s supply at a party thrown by Ezra (Steven John Ward), who’s currently cheating on his girlfriend Cici (Kayla Privett) with Kato’s girlfriend Amber (Paige Bonnin). Got all of that? It’s been a few years, but this group is still feeling the effects of senioritis.

The night goes on and the fire grows cold. People pair off, drift into the darkness. And that’s when this crew’s bad blood gets boiled and served back to them. Because a madman has gassed the camp and strapped everyone into bulky vests complete with locking mechanisms and a chest-mounted LED panel. He’s revealed to be Mr. Peterson, the group’s eccentric science teacher and Caleb’s father. “It’s been a long time since I taught all of you,” Peterson seethes. “Tonight’s your final lesson.” And the vest’s panels light up and begin to count down.

Setup complete, Triggered kicks into third gear. When time runs out, the vests explode. (Bobby gives a forced demonstration early on; “That’s not gonna heal,” quips Ezra of the bloody mess left behind.) But not every vest has the same amount of allotted time, and they’re also jury-rigged to keep track of which one is still ticking, so that the only way to stay alive is to be the last one standing. Bedlam ensues, with everyone swearing and running every which way in the dark. They also discover through the panicky, accidental braining of one of their crew that a killing transfers the victim’s time to the vest in closest proximity, i.e. the murderer. Time ticks away. Alliances form. Scabs are ripped from old wounds. And friends turn on friends until there’s only two vests left to go boom.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Take your pick. The 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale is probably the first and certainly the most notorious movie to explore the forced-to-fight trope, but for its part, Triggered makes self-aware references to The Hunger Games. There’s also 2016’s James Gunn-affiliated Belko Experiment, which put corporate drones at each other’s throats in a locked down office building, and more recently the very enjoyable Ready or Not with its ritualized game of death. With all the bloodletting and its darkly sarcastic tone, however, Triggered might be most like You’re Next, Adam Wingard’s deliciously gory 2011 film about a family with major issues beset by masked murderers during a tense reunion dinner.

Performance Worth Watching: As Kato, Russell Crous leans heartily into manic bloodthirstiness mode once the violence in Triggered begins to really pop off. He spits out as many gallows humor one-liners as he does teeth and mouthfuls of blood.

Memorable Dialogue: Kato tries to summarize just how crazed all of this is. “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, then blew his fucking brains out.”

Sex and Skin: There’s some hanky-panky in a tent, but the camera is shy.

Our Call: “There’s way too many people ignoring the horrible game we’re being forced to play,” Amber tells her boyfriend Kato, and their murderous survival scheme begins. At that point in Triggered, all of the other characters still standing are still searching for some way out, either of the explosive vests, the remote campsite, or both. Amber’s mortal embrace of the new status quo summarizes the film’s underlying message, which basically asserts that there’s a murderer lurking somewhere inside of everyone. It just takes a little incentive, a lure for the killer instinct, and bam! Watch Kato drive a crowbar into the ribs of his buddy. Watch him hoist an ax with glee. (He goes into a riff about how killing with an ax is special, because then you’re the only type of murderer honored with a descriptive.) And also watch the camera trailing behind Kato as he drags that ax along a path, braying warnings at his prey. Triggered is happy to engage with a cinematic blood trail that leads through Hunger Games and all the way back to I Spit On Your Grave and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It even gets some yuks from a repeated reference to Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Triggered staggers around its campsite setting at first, struggling to introduce all of its characters and their respective grudges and dramas. And of course the thorny logistic questions of explosive vests with onboard smart technology and closed-circuit bluetooth connectivity are not considered. But once it’s set on kill mode, the movie makes the most of each character’s motivations, for either murder or survival, and pulls more than a few laughs out of the fire. And in another nod to horror movie tradition, Triggered even devises a neat resolution that sets up a sequel. The “folks forced to kill” bit has been done to death. But that doesn’t mean it can’t kill again.

Our Take: STREAM IT. Triggered takes a minute to establish its characters and their interpersonal dramas, and the specifics of its exploding vest premise are never explored. But it has a lot of gory fun with it, too, and the dark sarcasm increases as the body count rises.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

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