TL;DR – When things click into place, this can be quite an entertaining film. Unfortunately, a lot of the connective tissue is full of awkwardness that holds it back.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.

Trigger Warning Review –

Okay, so I am going to be upfront with you right from the start. The reason I sat down to watch this film is because it has been an age since I have seen Jessica Alba in anything. She was one of those tent pole stars when I was growing up, and I am always here for a new renaissance.   

So to set the scene, we open in the Bādiyat al-Shām Desert, Syria, as two pickup trucks with machine guns chase down an aid vehicle that clearly is not delivering aid. Instead, it is driven by spec-ops operative Parker (Jessica Alba), who is very handy with a knife. But when an apparent cave-in kills her father at the mine he works in, Parker travels all the way home to deep rural America to find out what really happened. However, one look shows that the cave-in might be a very convenient conclusion.   

Overall, the film has a lot of strengths to it. Jessica Alba is bringing her a-game to what is a very physically demanding role. You need to do a lot to sell that you are special ops, at least in a screen sense, and she mostly pulls it off. This is helped by the director Mouly Surya and the second unit team having a clear understanding of the power of movement in the action scenes. They don’t appear as often as I think people would like, but when they do, they are explosive. I think my favourite was the ‘improvising in a hardware store’ fight, which included everything, even a chainsaw.

From a narrative perspective, it was nice that there was zero subtlety about who the bad guys would be. There is a single billboard when she arrives in town, and you know from just that one photo that he is evil. However, given that the audience already knows this, maybe the revenge part of the film could have kicked in a little earlier. Unfortunately, there were aspects of the film that became frustrating. It felt like Parker’s real superpower was to affect everyone around her with the lack of situational awareness because you spend the film going, ‘Surely someone saw here there’? One of the main subplots is that she should be the real heart of the town rather than Senator Ezekiel Swann (Anthony Michael Hall), his moron son Elvis (Jake Weary) and the probably corrupt sheriff Jesse (Mark Webber). This was an excellent idea, and I wish we had seen a bit more of it. Finally, I just don’t get the title. I think they are going for a gun reference, but then she spends the film being a knife expert.  

In the end, do we recommend Trigger Warning? Look, I think there was a lot of promise here, and Jessica Alba and the cast are doing a lot with what they are given. However, awkwardness and frustrating moments do hold it back. If you liked Trigger Warning, we would recommend to you Monkey Man.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Trigger Warning
Directed by – Mouly Surya
Written by – John Brancato, Josh Olson & Halley Gross
Music by – Enis Rotthoff
Cinematography by – Zoë White
Edited by – Chris Tonick & Robert Grigsby Wilson
Production/Distribution Companies – Thunder Road Films, Lady Spitfire & Netflix
Starring – Jessica Alba, Mark Webber, Anthony Michael Hall, Alejandro De Hoyos, Tone Bell, Jake Weary, Gabriel Basso & Kaiwi Lyman with Nadiv Molcho, Hari Dhillon, Peter Monro, Stephanie Jones, James Cady, Jerry G. Angelo & David DeLao
Rating – Australia: MA15+;