`TRIGGER EFFECT' A SHORT-CIRCUITED TALE OF URBAN ALIENATION.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

In the opening frames of ``The Trigger Effect,'' a pack of wild coyotes is seen tearing at a carcass, across from a fenced-in electrical compound.

Since the compound is about to suffer a mysterious blackout - along with most of the Lower 48 - the scene functions as a handy metaphor for the wolfish heart that beats within high-tech society.

If the tale that followed were half as arresting as that image, ``The Trigger Effect'' might've stood a chance.

Instead, this fable of urban alienation misfires one sequence after another, rarely scoring a direct emotional hit. Screenwriter David Koepp (``Mission: Impossible''), making his directorial debut, seldom achieves the dominolike dramatic urgency implied by the movie's title. There's only a kind of grinding inevitability.

Power lines aren't the only high-tension objects on display here. Suburban yuppies Matt (Kyle MacLachlan) and Annie (Elisabeth Shue) have been anxiously juggling their new baby and endless home renovations, when the juice goes out across America.

Within hours, the couple's safe, bland world has given way to the law of the jungle. Faced with looters, selfish neighbors and a killer heatwave, the family decides to flee town with Matt's construction-worker buddy Joe (Dermot Mulroney). Joe's stubbled, semi-articulate presence brings out the animal in Annie, much to her husband's, and the audience's, chagrin.

``You used to like my checkered past,'' Annie pouts boozily after Matt snubs her suggestion of playing truth or dare with Joe.

As the strains begin to mount up, we wait for payoffs that don't occur. Though the movie repeatedly teases us that Annie and Joe are about to touch off a powder keg, nothing much comes of it. Other subplots are simply dropped. Time and again, Koepp's screenplay loses either its nerve or its sense of purpose, and the tension fizzles.

The only exception takes place when a chance encounter with a wild-eyed hitchhiker (Michael Rooker) flares into violence. Viewed in isolation, the sequence has the dark moral undertow of a Flannery O'Connor short story. But it's too little too late.

At length the movie fashions a resolution that echoes the male-pattern hysteria of ``Straw Dogs'' and ``Deliverance,'' and the force-fed feel-goodness of ``Grand Canyon.'' Its climactic epiphany of racial understanding falls considerably short of plausibility.

Doing a pale knockoff of her ``Leaving Las Vegas'' role, Shue bears the worst of the script's shallowness. This talented actress desperately needs a new persona to replace the bad girl with the heart of gold.

Mulroney and MacLachlan do their best to convey the requisite wild-eyed intensity. It doesn't help that they barely get a human wrinkle or a funny line between them.

Can we believe that America's baby boomers are so inept at handling stress? Would a blackout really be cause for marital infidelity, stealing, murder and house-breaking? Haven't these people heard of batteries?

THE FACTS

The film: ``Trigger Effect'' (R; violence, language).

The stars: Kyle MacLachlan, Elisabeth Shue, Dermot Mulroney.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by David Koepp. Distributed by Gramercy.

Running time: One hour, 33 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two stars