Triangle (2009)

Directed by Christopher Smith [Other horror films: Creep (2004), Severance (2006), Black Death (2010), The Banishing (2020)]

I’ve seen this one twice now, and while I appreciate what the movie’s going for, I can’t say that I’ve been particularly impressed either time. Mostly this comes from the fact that the story’s a bit too confusing to fully wrap my head around, which, while it may be on me, still stains the film.

If there’s a time loop, and you know you’re stuck in a time loop, trying to break out of a time loop isn’t going to work as you’re already in the time loop. And if there’s three other versions of you in the same (but different) time loops, and three other other’s in other time loops (or dimensions), and the loop’s divided by an additional sea, is the time loop a circle or oval?

False, triangle.

Triangle’s interesting, and I think the movie looks really nice. The story, though, just isn’t my cup of tea. Jess trying to get home to her son to kill her original (or is that another loop version #2?) self to become a better mother only to loop again because loop loops loop.

On a serious note, when there is something like a time loop, in this case, and there are multiple versions of the same character floating around, it’s really hard for any impact to be felt when they’re killed. Because, well, you know they might have died, but there’s two other ‘theys’ around, and while they might also die, hey, look, another one. So how is anyone supposed to get pulled into the suspense at all if everything’s circular?

I’m sorry if I’m coming across as some uneducated philistine. It just doesn’t make sense to me. The whole point of a loop is that there’s no ending (or beginning), so no way to escape it. When Jess kills another version of herself, before that other version dies, she states that the only way to ‘break the loop’ is to kill the others on board. I don’t know if she meant just one group of the others or all the others, but it doesn’t matter, because it isn’t logical.

Not that our character of Jess (played by the only noteworthy performance, Melissa George) is particularly logical, so I can excuse that, but come on, did anyone not almost immediately guess purgatory? As soon as Sisyphus was mentioned, who didn’t see it coming?

I may be in the minority here. Triangle is generally well-respected, and has a solid rating on IMDb. And to be fair, maybe the movie makes sense outside of logic, or maybe I’m not understanding something entirely. This is entirely plausible, and I won’t hold that against the film. To be fair, maybe Triangle is a movie that should be seen more than twice in ten years to fully comprehend, but for the time being, I found this movie a nice-looking film but lacking in substance.

5.5/10

This is one of the films covered by Fight Evil’s podcast. Listen below as Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss this one.