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People are threatening to boycott Netflix over Syrian war scenes in 'Trigger Warning', starring Jessica Alba. But the film is too bad to be truly offensive, writes Louis Chilton

- Louis Chilton

When you sit down to watch a film called Trigger Warning, you ought to expect a bit of provocation. And sure enough, Netflix’s latest original offering – a revenge thriller of that name starring Jessica Alba as a hard-bitten American commando – has left viewers triggered. Well, not exactly triggered so much as annoyed and offended, with some threatening to “boycott” Netflix over the film’s crass depiction of warfare in the Middle East.

One social media post, “liked” over 65,000 times on X/Twitter, zeros in on a scene at the start of the film, in which a Special Forces team disguise themselves as humanitarian aid workers, and come under fire from a group of Syrian militants. Sharing stills from the action sequence, including subtitles that read “[Terrorist in Arabic]”, the X user wrote: “Boycott this racist ass movie that normalises Americans hiding in aid trucks to shoot and murder Arabs. Does this sound familiar to anyone?”