When a friend told me about Triggered, I was confused why she was drawing my attention to a film about kids in the woods with bombs around their necks. But that’s 2020’s Triggered; 2019’s Triggered is about a social justice warrior murdering people. That made a bit more sense given my tendency to watch the worst movies. But maybe this was a parody made in good faith? Maybe the message isn’t just, “she’s a deranged person who’s doing all this for attention.” But then I saw it, and unfortunately that’s absolutely the message. Well fuck me, I guess.
Callie Bishop, who appears to be this movie’s protagonist in the trailers, is the worst kind of person. She is every conservative’s parody of a social justice warrior, which I would like to remind people is not a bad thing! She’s the pink-haired, easily triggered, never worked a day in her life, homeschooled brat who forces the principal to give detention to a girl for putting chopsticks in her hair. You see… because that’s cultural appropriation… if you’re an idiot and have no idea what that term actually means. When questioned about her beliefs she can’t come up with anything other than hollow soundbites. And when she gains a modicum of popularity by faking a slasher attack she throws all her principles out the window. This is all because she’s not a real person; she’s a collection of the worst stereotypes of the progressive social movement. And the CB initials show she’s also an unflattering parody Chanty Binx, AKA “Big Red.” If you don’t know what that drama is about, consider yourself lucky.
Anyway, the real protagonist is Ian Falwell, her gay best friend (you named the gay kid after Jerry Falwell??!). He suffers through Callie’s self-inflicted drama and is the only thing keeping this movie from being 100% hateful. “See?” the writer/director seemingly cries. “Even her gay friend–who by the Rule of Stereotypes cannot be conservative–is sick of her shit! Imagine how everyone else feels!” I have nothing real bad to say about Ian, because that’s the point. He’s meant to be likable and easy going to contrast… well, everything about Callie. Although he does fall for a guy whose last name is Cox, so that’s even more proof of this movie’s lack of subtlety.
Don’t watch this movie. Don’t encourage it’s smug sense of superiority. To save you the effort of having to look anything about this movie up, here’s the plot: Callie and Ian are outcasts, but Callie accidentally murders a girl and stages it like a serial killer did it. The real serial killer is her mom, both mother and daughter are insane, most of the characters die, and Ian makes it out alive, telling the cops–and I quote–“They just wanted to be special.” Satire for dummies. Social commentary for the worst kind of people. Fucking awful.
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