- Written & Directed by M.P. Wills
- Stars: Rahel Romahn, Matt Levett, Sam Glistens
- Run time: 14:44
- Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8lLsriP6sU
Synopsis
In the past, a nine-year-old boy kills a bird with a hammer. His friend vows eventual retribution.
We see Eli, a blind man who’s got a complex orange-pulping machine. He goes outside, looking for his dog, who is missing.
Meanwhile, somewhere else, we see another man leading the dog out into the woods, where he clips off a piece of fur and puts it in his souvenir bag. He then does something terrible to the dog.
That night, Eli sits alone and listens to his neighbors fighting and having sex. The next day, he looks for his dog again. The neighbors are mean to him. The phone rings that night, and it’s his old friend wanting to come for a visit the next day. The police won’t help Eli with the dog, and we see Eli working on his oranges again the next morning. He puts something special in his orange juice this morning.
The dognapper comes to visit the blind man, and he drinks Eli’s orange juice. The dognapper is the blind man’s old friend, and he’s done two tours in Iraq with 13 confirmed kills (that he’ll admit). The man pulls out a pipe and puts the dog’s hair into the pipe. He then hands it to Eli, who gags when he smokes it. As Eli coughs at the burning hair smell, the dognapper plays the recording of the dog’s dying screams. The dognapper smiles at his cruelty but suddenly goes into convulsions. Eli put poison into his own orange juice, knowing the man would take it and drink it.
But that’s not all. Eli then gets his revenge on the entire neighborhood.
Commentary
The list of Eli’s ingredients at the end is the perfect finale to this story. You hear, but do not see, the dog suffering, but that’s something that bothers a lot of people, so “Trigger Warning” goes into this one.
It’s well shot, well written, and well-acted, and you’re really rooting for Eli here. We are never told the dog-killer’s name, but it’s clear that Eli knew it was him all along.