Triangle (2009) Directed by Christopher Smith
Sometimes you have seen so many horror movies that you have a hard time finding good ones. That’s what I had happen to me for a while, so I started researching on line for obscure horror films that are actually good. I stumbled across a few sites mentioning Triangle. I was intrigued by the premise and was hoping for a good slasher movie. Well, I didn’t get a slasher movie but I got something interesting to say the least. I didn’t want to read much into it because I heard it’s a real thought provoker, so I went in semi blindly with my wife the other night and popped this movie in.
Jess, a single mother to a special needs son prepares for a boat trip with her friend Greg. The doorbell rings but no one is there, she asks if anyone saw someone ring her bell, but nothing. She shrugs it off and leaves for the boat trip. She comes to the harbor without her son, and says that Tommy her son is in school. The boat group consists of Jess, Greg, Heather, Sally, Downey, and Victor. Victor is played by Liam Hemsworth aka Gale from The Hunger Games aka the almost Mr. Miley Cyrus. Anyhoo…they leave shore on the yacht to the ocean. They head for the Bermuda Triangle, which I’m not sure why anyone would even attempt to go near that area with all the strange happenings and disappearances over history, but hey what do I know? Suddenly a large storm sweeps Heather overboard and the boat capsizes. The storm leaves and the group climb on top of the boat.
An ocean liner pulls up and they board it, but no one seems to be aboard. Jess has strange feelings of Déjà vu as they look around. Bizarre things happen making it seem that someone is indeed on the boat. Jess witnesses each person die one by one. Victor has a massive head wound (much like Harry from SNL), Greg, Sally, and Downer are shot by a masked killer. The mask is really creepy, almost like Jason on Friday the 13th Pt 2 or the phantom from the Town that Dreaded Sundown. The shooter tries to shoot Jess but she fights back and sends him overboard.
Next, Jess hears yelling and sees her and the group standing on Greg’s capsized boat. Jess trails the group and realizes she’s in a loop, where she is the unseen presence they couldn’t find earlier. Jess tries to warn Victor and accidentally impales his head on a hook. She then notices that the loop has been repeated many times without her noticing. Like most movies of this type she tries to change the outcome by messing with the events. Even though she tries, another version of her kills the others again, like the times before. The killer is thrown overboard by Jess’s newer version, thus repeating the loop again.
The boat returns again and Jess realizes the loop restarts when the others are killed. She frantically tries to stop the loop and prevents them from boarding at all. She sets everything from the loop into motion, and she herself becomes the shooter. When she is disarmed, she urges her counterpart to kill everyone when they return, before falling off the ship. Jess awakens ashore, and goes home, only to find that a version of her had done so earlier. She watches as that version abuses Tommy out of anger towards his disability. Promising to stop the abuse, Jess distracts her counterpart with the doorbell and kills her in order to take her place. Jess leaves with her son in the car, only to find that this sequence of events has happened before as well. A truck hits the car and Tommy dies, leaving Jess alone. A taxi driver pulls up and Jess gets in. They arrive at the harbor and she joins the group on the yacht, starting the loop again.
Ok, so going into this review I knew it was going to be nearly impossible to explain this film. It has a lot of twists and turns, also there are at least three versions of Jess running around at the same time in parts, so explaining what happens is confusing. Honestly, I had to get help from good old Wikipedia to try and explain the events in this movie. When dealing with time travel and déjà vu, it’s always a tough job trying to recap it. I hope I did a halfway decent job of this, if not I suggest reading about it or watching the movie.
This is a very, very thought-provoking movie. One of those movies where you sit around and try to piece the story together and find a reason for what happened. My wife and I had a few ideas. I will give you mine. At the beginning you see her at home, cleaning up Tommy’s mess, and the doorbell rings. At the end we see it is her later version ringing the bell. She is shown comforting Tommy, which you think is because of the mess but we later see its because he witnesses her killing her past abusive self, and attempts to atone for the abuse. I believe that she always was an abusive mother, and Tommy died in the car crash, as well as Jess. The taxi driver that pulls up and says something about nothing will bring Tommy back. She accepts the ride and goes to the harbor; the taxi driver says he’ll wait if she promises to be back. She instead gets on the boat and goes through the loop. I believe the loop is purgatory; the taxi driver is the devil waiting to take her to hell for her sins. No matter how she changes the loop, the outcome is always the same. Much like the man that pushes the boulder to the top of the hill, only to have it roll back down and start over. That is only my idea, from what I gathered from the movie and research online.
I would say watch the movie, like I mentioned before it is full of twists and interesting parts for sure, so enough to keep you wondering what really happened. If you really like Groundhog Day and you want to see a messed up version of it, then give Triangle a shot. It really is more of a sci-fi thriller mystery than a horror movie, but its really fun and deep. I would give this movie a B, it made me think and was deeper than I thought it would be, the acting is decent but it is confusing at times and I found myself lost for much of the middle. A lesson I learned from this movie, stay the hell away from the Bermuda Triangle, but that should be an obvious decision.
