Jessica Alba is no stranger to action. The star of Dark Angel and Sin City has a long history of kicking butt on-screen, but in her new film Trigger Warning (which Alba also executive produced), she gets more than she bargained for. 

“I haven’t really done hand-to-hand combat and intense action in such a long time,” Alba tells Tudum. And she means intense. Alba was determined to make Trigger Warning protagonist Parker into more than just a gunplay expert. Working with director Mouly Surya and the film’s stunt team, Alba incorporated Indonesian knife fighting into the film’s fight choreography, crafting sequences that would require fast thinking and movement. “For me, “I really wanted it to be a more intimate kind of fighting experience if I needed to take somebody out.” 

Those skills serve Special Forces commando Parker well when she returns to her hometown and uncovers the bleak conspiracy that may have been connected to her father’s mysterious death. Read on for more information about Trigger Warning, now streaming on Netflix.

Ursula Coyote/Netflix

What’s Trigger Warning about?

Special Forces commando Parker (Jessica Alba) is on active duty overseas when she gets called back to her hometown with the tragic news that her father has suddenly died. Now the owner of the family bar, Parker reconnects with her former boyfriend turned sheriff Jesse (Mark Webber), his hot-tempered brother Elvis (Jake Weary), and their powerful father Senator Swann (Anthony Michael Hall) as she looks to understand what actually happened to her dad. 

Parker’s search for answers quickly goes south, and she soon finds herself at odds with a violent gang running rampant in her hometown. Unsure of who she can truly trust, Parker draws on her commando training and proves herself a force to be reckoned with as she hunts down the truth and attempts to right what has gone wrong in Swann County, with the help of her covert ops partner and hacker Spider (Tone Bell) and connected local dealer Mike (Gabriel Basso). Trigger Warning is directed by Mouly Surya, written by John Brancato, Josh Olson, and Halley Gross, and produced by Erica Lee, Basil Iwanyk, and Esther Hornstein. 

Karen Kuehn/Netflix

Ursula Coyote/Netflix

For director Surya, the story had unexpected power. “I think one of the things that attracted me is there’s loss in this film,” Surya says. “And I really connected with that grief of losing… my father a few years before.” 

Alba also connected to her character’s grief. “My grandfather passed away in the process of developing this movie,” she says. “I drew from a lot of that personal experience when I was doing the movie just because it literally just happened, and I got to actually use a lot of my family’s photos in the scenes in the bar.” It’s a family story, after all. 

Where can I watch a trailer for Trigger Warning?

Check it out at the top of the story!

Ursula Coyote/Netflix

Who’s in the cast of Trigger Warning?

Trigger Warning features:

• Jessica Alba (Dark Angel, Honey)
• Mark Webber (Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Green Room)
• Tone Bell (Survival of the Thickest, The United States vs. Billie Holiday)
• Jake Weary (It Follows, How to Blow Up a Pipeline) 
• Gabriel Basso (The Night Agent, Super 8)
• Anthony Michael Hall (The Breakfast Club, War Machine) 
• Kaiwi Lyman (Den of Thieves, American Horror Story)
• Hari Dhillon (Entrapment, Bad Education)

Alba’s leading role fulfills a longtime dream to be an action hero, just like a few of her childhood heroes. “I loved Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita,” she says. “I also loved Ripley [in Alien], and I love Sarah Connor in Terminator.” (On Dark Angel, Alba worked with James Cameron, the man who made Ripley and Sarah Connor action icons.)

Ursula Coyote/Netflix

For Surya, Alba herself was an icon growing up. The director first connected with her by phone in an unlikely locale — outside a yoga class in Surya’s native Jakarta, Indonesia. “It was a little surreal,” Surya says. “We talked for an hour or so, and it was totally unexpected talking with your teenage idol basically out of nowhere.” 

As time went on, of course, Surya acclimated to being starstruck. “At first I didn’t know how to act around her,” she says. “But then slowly you start to see actors as [people].” Surya has plenty of experience working with stars in Indonesia, where she’s directed several films, including the Citra Award-winning Fiksi. and Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts. “Jessica is very fiery and also she’s straight up,” Surya says. “She will tell you exactly what she thinks, and I love that about her.”

Ursula Coyote/Netflix

When will Trigger Warning be released on Netflix?

Trigger Warning is now streaming on Netflix. And be forewarned: it hits hard. Brace yourself.