Ah, Trigger Man, Ti West’s “thriller” that promises suspense, danger, and isolation—and then gives you 80 minutes of men walking through the woods like they lost their GPS signal and their will to live. This is what happens when you take The Deer Hunter, remove the Russian roulette, remove the deer, and then forget to add a movie.
This isn’t slow-burn horror. This is no-burn, lukewarm sad soup. A film where suspense is replaced by static shots of twigs and where “tension” consists of three dudes in camo mumbling about sandwiches while you slowly grow older in real time.
🎯 Plot: A Hike to Nowhere
Here’s the “plot,” generously defined: Three guys—Reggie, Ray, and Sean—head into the woods for a day of hunting. One of them has a gun. Another has a hat. The third has the charisma of a partially deflated beanbag chair. They wander. They eat lunch. They talk about… nothing. One of them pees. A twig snaps. And then, finally—finally!—someone gets shot.
It takes over 40 minutes for anything remotely resembling a plot twist to occur, and when it does, it’s like Ti West suddenly remembered, “Oh yeah, I promised a thriller.” Up until then, you’re stuck in handheld purgatory, watching people shuffle through underbrush and make vague eye contact with pine trees.
The twist? There’s a sniper in the woods. A faceless, motivation-less killer who makes No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh look like a nuanced Shakespearean villain. People die. The camera trembles. Someone runs. And then it ends. The whole thing feels like watching a bad paintball match filmed by a guy who forgot to take off the lens cap half the time.
👨🌾 Characters: Meatbags with Beards
There are three of them. They are named Reggie, Ray, and Sean, but don’t bother remembering who’s who. They’re basically Human Shrug #1, #2, and #3. We get no backstory, no personality, no reason to care whether they live or die.
Their dialogue sounds like it was lifted from a half-hearted camping vlog:
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“So… you like mustard?”
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“Yeah. Not too much, though.”
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[Five seconds of chewing]
Their version of emotional depth is complaining about city life while looking like they all accidentally wandered off from a Bass Pro Shops photoshoot. There’s no chemistry, no conflict, and no development. They just kind of exist, like background noise or expired beef jerky.
🎥 Cinematography: Now with Extra ShakyCam™
If you’ve ever wanted to get motion sickness from watching a guy walk, Trigger Man is your film. The camera jiggles like it’s being held by someone with low blood sugar and a grudge against tripods. Ti West clearly wanted the “you are there” effect, but all it does is scream “you are nauseous.”
The woods look nice, sure, in that generic “nature is still a thing” kind of way. But when every shot is either a zoomed-in tree branch or a wide-angle shot of someone’s back disappearing into the brush, it starts to feel less like mood-building and more like a bad REI commercial.
The editing? Ha. There are home videos of grandma’s birthday party with more tension. Whole minutes go by with nothing but rustling leaves and the occasional grunt. There’s a scene where a guy eats a sandwich and stares into the middle distance for what feels like an eternity. It’s less “man on the edge” and more “man wondering if he left the stove on.”
🔇 Dialogue: Vapid, Mumbled, and Blessedly Sparse
If you’re into mumbling, congratulations—Trigger Man is your Hamilton. Every line sounds like it was recorded by accident. No projection, no clarity, just men whispering half-thoughts to each other like they’re afraid the trees are wired.
Ti West doesn’t bother with exposition, and that’s fine—when there’s something to hide. But in this case, there’s no mystery, no drama, and no reason to care. It’s not minimalist. It’s lazy.
Also, fun fact: one character shares a monologue about a deer once and it’s the emotional high point of the movie. That’s not praise. That’s a cry for help.
🎯 The “Thriller” Part: Blink and You’ll Miss the Budget
When the sniper shows up, the film briefly remembers it’s supposed to have suspense. There’s a gunshot. Someone dies. And then—wait for it—more walking. The film’s idea of action is a man running through the woods, looking back every few seconds like he forgot where he parked his car.
There’s no psychological dimension. No tension. No stakes. Just run, panic, breathe heavily, and cut to black. No villain, no resolution, no payoff. It’s like Deliverance without the banjo or the purpose.
At one point, a character hides in an abandoned building for a while. We get extended footage of him doing nothing. You could cut that scene and insert a test pattern and nobody would notice.
🧠 Themes? Hah.
Maybe there’s a metaphor buried somewhere under all that foliage—something about masculinity, violence, or man vs. nature. But if it’s there, it’s buried under so many layers of silence and inaction that you’d need a shovel and a Ph.D. to find it.
Some might argue the sniper represents random, meaningless violence in a post-9/11 America. Cool. Then give me a reason to care. Or a main character with more emotional range than a rock in a flannel shirt.
🧻 Final Verdict: Ti West’s Training Wheels Thriller
Look, everyone starts somewhere. Ti West would go on to make some genuinely inventive horror films—The House of the Devil and X among them. But Trigger Man is the film school project you bury deep in the resume under “miscellaneous freelance.”
It’s not suspenseful. It’s not character-driven. It’s not even interesting. It’s a minimalist thriller without the thrill, a camping trip from hell where the scariest thing is that you can’t get your time back.
TL;DR
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Plot: Three guys go hunting, get hunted. That’s it.
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Characters: Ambiguously named beard mannequins
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Dialogue: Whispered nonsense and sandwich talk
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Cinematography: Shaky, aimless, migraine-inducing
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Tension: Absent without leave
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Themes: Maybe, if you squint real hard
Rating: 1 out of 5 rustling bushes that were probably the boom mic guy
Trigger Man is a movie that aims for “existential dread in the woods” and lands on “three bros lose a hiking trail and so do we.” It’s what happens when a thriller is allergic to thrills. Proceed only if you’ve ever wondered what boredom sounds like in a forest.
