Written and directed by Christopher Smith Triangle is the third film that Smith donned two hats for as creator. The story follows Jess (Melissa George) single mum of an autistic child. We first see Jess dockside, she is going on a day-trip with a group of friends on a yacht. Jess seems a little out of it. Dazed and confused, when she is asked about her son, she responds in a very vague fashion. She boards the yacht and so begins our adventure.
Once they get out at sea they are hit by sudden electrical storm and the yacht capsizes. As they cling desperately to the boat, a ship approaches their stricken vessel. The group of five board the ship only to find it deserted. They decide to explore it to see if there is anyone on board the seemingly empty ship. Jess is plagued by a sense of Deja Vue and catches a glimpse of a masked figure.
While the Jess and co. are searching for other people, the masked figure is killing them off, one by one. Jess finally confronts the masked killer only to find that it is her. Jess dispatches her masked self and dumps her body overboard. While doing this she sees the yacht and herself and her friends boarding the ship. Jess realizes that she has been caught in a time loop and that she must kill everyone quickly before the loop can repeat itself. When she seemingly does this, she discovers that she has apparently been caught in this loop over and over again. As she kills each of her friends, however, we can see that she has done this same thing before and by the pile of her friends bodies, she has done it a lot.
Jess escapes the boat and ends up back home where she observes herself interacting with her autistic son. Jess is horrified to see that she is not a good mother. She mistreats her son and is quite nasty to him saying that her life would be so much better without him in it. Jess then kills her other self and decides to bring her son with her on the yacht trip.
This film was brilliant. While watching it, I would find myself guessing what would happen next only to realize that I was incorrect. The best I could do was figure out the Ground Hog Day aspect of the film but not the O. Henry ending. Melissa George was excellent in the film. And why wouldn’t she be. With a list of horror films under her belt, 30 Days of Night, Amityville Horror, Triangle, The Betrayed, A Lonely Place to Die, she is the new millenniums “Scream Queen”
Triangle opened to positive reviews. Unfortunately this was a case where the critics loved the film and the audience stayed away in droves. I don’t know why this film fared so badly with the audience. I saw the film after my daughter had seen it and then raved on about it non-stop until I said I would see it. After watching it I decided she was right to be so excited about the film. But the die had already been cast, because the DVD came out so quickly that I thought the distributors had made a mistake.
Triangle is a brilliant and tragic film. Watch it and you will not regret it. Hell, you might even watch it again and again and…
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