Triangle
Writer/director Christopher Smith’s 2009 film Triangle hurts my head with the complexity of its plot, but I love it anyway. I’ve seen it three or four times in the past fifteen years, and it never fails to impress me with its combination of intellectual gamesmanship and emotional impact. Thus the fact that it seems relatively underseen in the horror community is a surprise to me, and one that I’d like to rectify if possible. I’ll begin with a spoiler-free review for those who haven’t seen the movie, and then discuss the story in spoiler-heavy depth in the latter part of this essay. What I’ll say up top is this: Triangle is a minor masterpiece of mystery and suspense that deepens upon repeat viewings.
In Miami, Jess (Melissa George), wearing a dress, is trying to hurry her autistic son Tommy to get ready for a trip in the car. She steps away to answer the doorbell, but nobody is there when she opens the door. The story then moves to the dock, where Greg (Michael Dorman) is welcoming guests onto his sailboat, Triangle. Married couple Sally (Rachael Carpani) and Downey (Henry Nixon) are already there, along their single friend, Heather (Emma Lung). Last to arrive are the ship’s mate, Victor (Liam Hemsworth), and Jess, now wearing a white halter top and jean shorts. She seems a bit out of it but boards anyway.
Asked why Tommy isn’t with her, she at first says she doesn’t know where he is, but then absentmindedly corrects herself and says he’s at school. On Saturday, Victor queries. Greg says it’s a special needs school, open every day, and that closes the topic. They’ve been sailing peacefully for hours when the wind disappears. They receive a panicked radio message from an unknown woman saying she needs help, and that someone is killing everyone. They’re unable to ascertain more info due to the interruption of a huge storm, which capsizes the boat. Waiting for rescue on top of the sinking Triangle, an ocean liner named Aeolus drifts near enough for the group to board it. Initially the ship seems deserted, although it still has power. Jess gets a sense of déjà vu from the place, but Greg tells her she’s just stressed from the storm. And then an unknown assailant with a burlap bag over their head starts shooting at them.
Dorman does nice work as the gracious if somewhat irritable Greg, but Hemsworth has less to do other than looking young and hunky as Victor. Carpani is very good as the judgmental Sally, instantly suspicious of Jess’s supposed designs on the single Greg and wanting to set him up with Heather. Nixon and Lung are both fine, but both are stuck with somewhat underwritten characters. George is superb as Jess in what may be the best performance of her career. She’s most of the show in Triangle, and she doesn’t disappoint. She manages to make the character credible in what is a most incredible situation, nails the demanding physicality of the role and beautifully handles its dramatic challenges. She’s haunted and hunted, and this film should have made her a star.
COMPLETE SPOILERS FOLLOW:
Jess has been verbally and physically abusive to Tommy in the past. While yelling at him in her car, they get hit by a truck and killed. Another version of Jess, the one in shorts, witnesses the accident and then goes to board the Triangle. The whole thing seems odd to her because she only partly has a sense of having done all this before. Once upon the Aeolus, she quickly realizes that the masked killer is another version of herself. She’s stuck in a time loop, convinced that killing everybody on the ship will bring her back to the beginning of the loop where she can possibly save her son. But when she does get back and witnesses the car accident, instead of moving on she rejoins the loop to suffer once again.
The stylishness of Smith’s direction complements the intricacy of Triangle’s story, from the dreamy visuals of the past Jess likes to pretend happened to the staccato repeating bits of scenes representing time itself fragmenting. He’s aided in this primarily by Stuart Gazzard’s remarkable editing, which takes the concepts of the script and makes the complicated clear. Robert Humphrey’s cinematography is elegant, gliding down the long, dimly lit corridors of the Aeolus (Melinda Doring’s production design is outstanding) with spooky grace. Smith uses the claustrophobic ship spaces to maximize the intensity of its suspense, and an array of maritime creaks and white noise on the soundtrack combine to add eerie atmosphere.
There are many clever shots in the film, from a reflection in a cracked mirror representing the moment Jess becomes the masked killer to a shot traveling through a mirror that symbolizes a change of POV from one point on the time loop to another. There are amusing shots such as the GOODBYE, PLEASE RETURN sign Jess is going to see repeatedly, or cinematic references, such as one room on the ship that’s a murder location being Room 237, the same number from The Shining with the dead woman in the tub. But the very best set piece in Triangle is when Jess is chasing a wounded Sally, who turns a corner to find a section of the ship festooned with dozens of dead Sallys from previous loop iterations, covered in feathers and bird droppings as the gulls casually feast upon the corpses. There are other similar moments in which Jess discovers dozens of crumpled notes or lockets, but none has the crushing impact that the casual graveyard of Sallys does.
Smith’s script is a circuitous puzzle, similar in thematic ways to Groundhog Day or Timecrimes but different in intent. George, in an interview, said she had to read it ten times to get her head around it. At one point mid-film there are probably at least three iterations of Jess interacting with each other, not to mention the other hapless guests. But the dizzying layers of the plot, although entertaining, aren’t really what Smith is getting at. There are certainly several ways to interpret the movie (primarily that this loop is her eternal punishment for mistreating Tommy; Aeolus in Greek myth was the father of cursed Sisyphus), but to my mind, it’s about a grieving mother trying to earn forgiveness by “saving” her son. In theory, Jess and Tommy are already dead in the car crash before the time loop plot even begins. The loop story is Jess trying to redeem herself in an afterlife, a maze of time created by one “rat” to torment herself.
The first shot of the picture is Jess comforting a distressed Tommy, telling him he’s just had a bad dream, and that when she has a bad dream, “I close my eyes and think of something nice, like being here with you.” That’s the crux of the whole film right there. She just wants to be with her son again, to save him if she could just fix time. But to do so she thinks she needs to kill her shipmates, that it’s a condition of getting out of the loop. This is why the first thing she does when she meets Greg is to apologize to him, although he doesn’t know why. Before she murders Downey and shoots Sally she says, “I’m sorry, but I love my son.” In one scene later in the movie, Greg pleads with her, “Don’t you see that this all just in your mind?’ In the car crash aftermath, a bystander says of Tommy, “Nothing can bring him back,” but Jess’ combination of hope and guilt can’t accept that.
Triangle is a film that rewards multiple viewings. George’s performance plays differently when you realize that her character has gone through this loop possibly many, many times. It gains a tragic dramatic depth, like some of the best horror films do. On this viewing, however, I thought I detected a bit of optimism in the scene in which Jess decides to go back and do the time loop again. She knows she can’t really save Tommy – they’re both dead, after all – but she can repent her actions and try to become a better mother. And one day, she can walk out of the maze.
Triangle is streaming and available for VOD.