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Triangle
Psychological Thriller / English / 2009
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Another strong recommendation by ChatGPT, despite my expressed disinterest in "horror" movies.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
This time we have much tighter "time travel" story, although more along the lines of Groundhog Day, if the the day didn't merely reset, but the events of the day accumulated.
Basically 3 women and 3 men come together to board a boat called the Triangle for a stint on the water, a freak storm hits and capsizes their boat, killing one of the women. When a cruise ship called the Aeolus shows up out of nowhere to save them they board it to find it inexplicably empty.
It takes a little over 15 minutes for the conflict to begin (the storm), and a bit over half an hour in everyone has died at the hands of a mysterious killer on the ship alleged to be Main Girl.
Main Girl survives the killer's attack on her and throws the killer overboard at which point the Triangle reappears with the 5 original survivors attempting to board the ship again as if nothing happened and Main Girl is established to be a future (past?) version of herself already on the ship.
Obviously, along with some other clues, it's implied that Main Girl is the mysterious killer and this is revealed about 40 minutes in.
This is already what passes for a big twist ending in any other movie, but Triangle's just getting started. It is only in attempting to escape detection from her doppelganger and divert the events that unfold does she find herself eventually replaying the events over and over until she ultimately becomes the killer, because it is only when everyone dies that the boat reappears.
There are some great impact visuals in this movie to emphasize just how much time has passed with her following through the same sequence of events, loose crumpled paper where she's compared her own handwriting, a drain with numerous copies of her one of a kind locket, and of course the corner of the ship where one of the victims has been repeatedly chased to and died at multiple times among the corpses of all of her previous incarnations.
It's moments like that really make this concept really cool and scary, because, and it's used quite deliberately, if you thought you had escaped from the loop and turn around just to be faced with a mound of evidence that you've tried and failed this exact thing multiple times, that's super intimidating, and almost suggests a sort of predestination.
It makes sense that upon learning that the boat, her perceived only means of escape, reappears each time everyone dies, that she would resort to killing everyone. The main issue with this is that there is no established progenitor killer. She only starts killing the other characters because they wind up dying anyway, and by killing them the events restart and she has an opportunity to prevent them from happening.
As it eventually settles in, however, she has no natural conclusion to her own continuity, because she always ultimately has to kill herself, which restarts the day.
Even when she manages to escape the boat and finds herself even further back in time, her old self is still there, and she's revealed to be quite an abusive mother, which gives her motivation to kill and replace herself... but even this sequence of events is shown to have taken place multiple times.
Finally, she resigns herself to boarding the Triangle again, knowing full well of the storm that waits and the loop she still has to break.
There's no happy ending to this story, unfortunately, and according to Wikipedia this movie was a huge box office flop, which is disappointing because I actually thought this movie was quite good.
I like the empty cruise ship as the setting for a slasher movie and I like that it was quite brisk to get to the central conceit and then just allowing the audience to absorb all of what Main Girl tries to do to escape the loop, including the mounting different versions of herself all observing and interfering with her various goals in the moment.
It seems like the sort of movie that could make an interesting video game, and I would not be surprised if I tapped this movie for inspiration for my own projects.
All said, it wasn't terribly surprising, I got one jumpscare out of it, and my preference is generally to have an actual conclusion to the story, but it was still quite interesting and being paced as well as it is, it's a very easy watch, which I appreciate. Too often I feel like I'm sitting down for a chore when I watch these movies and this wasn't one of them.
Yet again, ChatGPT comes through with a good recommendation.
Final Verdict: [Good]
Triangle
Psychological Thriller / English / 2009
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Another strong recommendation by ChatGPT, despite my expressed disinterest in "horror" movies.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
This time we have much tighter "time travel" story, although more along the lines of Groundhog Day, if the the day didn't merely reset, but the events of the day accumulated.
Basically 3 women and 3 men come together to board a boat called the Triangle for a stint on the water, a freak storm hits and capsizes their boat, killing one of the women. When a cruise ship called the Aeolus shows up out of nowhere to save them they board it to find it inexplicably empty.
It takes a little over 15 minutes for the conflict to begin (the storm), and a bit over half an hour in everyone has died at the hands of a mysterious killer on the ship alleged to be Main Girl.
Main Girl survives the killer's attack on her and throws the killer overboard at which point the Triangle reappears with the 5 original survivors attempting to board the ship again as if nothing happened and Main Girl is established to be a future (past?) version of herself already on the ship.
Obviously, along with some other clues, it's implied that Main Girl is the mysterious killer and this is revealed about 40 minutes in.
This is already what passes for a big twist ending in any other movie, but Triangle's just getting started. It is only in attempting to escape detection from her doppelganger and divert the events that unfold does she find herself eventually replaying the events over and over until she ultimately becomes the killer, because it is only when everyone dies that the boat reappears.
There are some great impact visuals in this movie to emphasize just how much time has passed with her following through the same sequence of events, loose crumpled paper where she's compared her own handwriting, a drain with numerous copies of her one of a kind locket, and of course the corner of the ship where one of the victims has been repeatedly chased to and died at multiple times among the corpses of all of her previous incarnations.
It's moments like that really make this concept really cool and scary, because, and it's used quite deliberately, if you thought you had escaped from the loop and turn around just to be faced with a mound of evidence that you've tried and failed this exact thing multiple times, that's super intimidating, and almost suggests a sort of predestination.
It makes sense that upon learning that the boat, her perceived only means of escape, reappears each time everyone dies, that she would resort to killing everyone. The main issue with this is that there is no established progenitor killer. She only starts killing the other characters because they wind up dying anyway, and by killing them the events restart and she has an opportunity to prevent them from happening.
As it eventually settles in, however, she has no natural conclusion to her own continuity, because she always ultimately has to kill herself, which restarts the day.
Even when she manages to escape the boat and finds herself even further back in time, her old self is still there, and she's revealed to be quite an abusive mother, which gives her motivation to kill and replace herself... but even this sequence of events is shown to have taken place multiple times.
Finally, she resigns herself to boarding the Triangle again, knowing full well of the storm that waits and the loop she still has to break.
There's no happy ending to this story, unfortunately, and according to Wikipedia this movie was a huge box office flop, which is disappointing because I actually thought this movie was quite good.
I like the empty cruise ship as the setting for a slasher movie and I like that it was quite brisk to get to the central conceit and then just allowing the audience to absorb all of what Main Girl tries to do to escape the loop, including the mounting different versions of herself all observing and interfering with her various goals in the moment.
It seems like the sort of movie that could make an interesting video game, and I would not be surprised if I tapped this movie for inspiration for my own projects.
All said, it wasn't terribly surprising, I got one jumpscare out of it, and my preference is generally to have an actual conclusion to the story, but it was still quite interesting and being paced as well as it is, it's a very easy watch, which I appreciate. Too often I feel like I'm sitting down for a chore when I watch these movies and this wasn't one of them.
Yet again, ChatGPT comes through with a good recommendation.
Final Verdict: [Good]