Trigger Happy Review: Stylish Dark Comedy
Streaming Movie Review - Comedy/Satire - VOD
When art tries to poke fun at both sides of the political divide, it often ends up in a middle space that doesn’t say anything of interest. In her debut feature film, Trigger Happy, which comes to VOD on February 25, Tiffany Kim Stevens avoids that trap by creating a story with so many abrasive characters that you really can see just how many problems exist across the board.
George Decker (Tyler Poelle) is completely unhappy in his retro-future version of America. He works at a job that he hates. He is struggling financially. And he resents his bread-winning wife, Annie (Elsha Kim). The only time he feels some sense of peace is on his walk to work when he stops at a billboard and daydreams about a trip to the Bahamas. But even that is ruined by a girl who shoots him with a BB gun in the knees. He feels stuck until he decides that he will murder Annie for her insurance money. But in order to do that, he will need to figure out how to get around their friends Gemma (Christina Kirkman) and Mikey (Matt Lowe) in order to pull off the scheme.
Trigger Happy turns its satirical gaze at relationships, capitalism, and politics with varying degrees of success. The political satire is decent, with a woman on a soapbox with a megaphone declaring that you can only receive healthcare with the purchase of a gun, but beyond that, it seemed a bit muddy. When the film focuses on topics like relationships and consumerism, it is far more effective.
The performances in this are solid across the board, and that is something because these characters are almost entirely unlikeable. Despite the fact that we don’t want to root for any of the people in the film, there are still enough moments of humanity that exist for us to connect with them, and that is a testament to the acting brought to the table.
Where Trigger Happy really shines is as a dark comedy. The humor in this is often laugh-out-loud funny. One of the best scenes is a birthday party at the restaurant where George works. The commercial for the Wow! Sponge is a phenomenal riff on any number of “As seen on TV” style infomercials. And the most gruesome death in the film is likely to elicit a chuckle, even as you stare in horror at the screen.
The other positive of the film is its aesthetic. It has kind of a 50’s look in the costuming and set design, but the characters have cell phones and drive modern cars. This blend of modern and retro is eye-catching and contributes to the uneasy feeling that pervades the film.
Some of the scatter-shot approach to satire definitely misses in this film, but the bulk of it lands and lands hard. If you need to like your characters to connect with a film, Trigger Happy probably isn’t for you, but if you are willing to engage with these flawed characters, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Check out my interview with director Tiffany Kim Stevens here: