Triggered has what is, quite possibly, the most loathesome character I've ever seen on screen. Her name is Callee and all she does is complain about (mostly) made up bigotry and intolerance. She seems to think that being a crusader for social justice only entails following the most ridiculous of the far left on Twitter and shaming anyone who doesn't prescribe to her narrow vision of what's right and what's wrong. This gets her a decent amount of attention at her small town high school for a while until a serial killer from the past shows back up and she has to figure out another way to get attention even if it means murder.
You have to give actress Meredith Mohler and writer/director Chris Moore a hand for daring to create such a narcissistic and selfish character and placing her as the lead in a film. It's to their credit that she remains watchable and interesting even when she's doing the most wicked of things. If Mohler plays her cards right, I could see her having a big future.
The rest of the cast is good as well, but they're given less to work with and can come across more like cartoons, which does fit with the tone of the film, so that's not really a negative. The only ones who get fully fleshed out characters are Jesse Dalton and Amanda Wyss who play Callee's long-suffering gay BFF and her alcoholic school principal with a dark past of her own. They're the only two truly sympathetic characters in the film and they do a wonderful job of grounding the film when it starts getting crazy.
The film was obviously made for about 3 cents, but this is one of those times when a low budget helps a film and gives it an unpolished early John Waters feel which seems to be what the creators are going for and, more often than not, they succeed. There's also a surprising amount of male nudity instead of the typical female nudity found in films like this and it's also a positive portrait of a gay teen that's not the usual coming out story or bullying story.
