Triangle
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

Australia, R, 99 m, 2009
Directed by Christopher Smith. Stars Melissa George, Joshua McIvor, Jack Taylor, et al.

Writer/director Christopher Smith’s most recent effort, Triangle, is chock-a-block full of allusions to semi-classic spook shows like Ghost Ship and The Shining, but somehow it rarely—if ever—feels imitative or contrived. The references don’t take us out of the action as they do in a Quentin Tarantino film; Smith is subtly honoring his influences—not showing off his cinematic literacy. Triangle plays very much like a dream, and seeing how our dreams often spring from movies, the borrowings here are entirely appropriate. Actually, Triangle’s structure, which is circular, might put you more in the mind of a feverish nightmare (or, if you happen to suffer from OCD as I do, a particularly bad case of “brain lock”): it keeps looping even beyond the end titles. There’s no reprieve, no escape—you’re stuck in the spokes of an ever-spinning cosmic wheel like those luckless spacemen in the “Death Ship” episode of “The Twilight Zone.” At one point, I was even reminded of a lyric from Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”: “Oh, the movie never ends; it goes on and on and on and on.”

Triangle starts almost bewilderingly as it jumps backward and forward through the day of a high-strung single mother, Jess (heartbreakingly gorgeous Melissa George), as she struggles to stay on top of her domestic duties while tending to the special needs of her autistic son, Tommy (Joshua McIvor). One moment she’s comforting the boy, who’s experienced some sort of shock, and the next moment she’s trying to account for who’s been sneaking into her house and leaving cryptic Post-it notes on her fridge. Of course, you’re free to interpret these truncated scenes any way you like, but doing so will only take you further away from the truth and set you up for one humdinger of a bombshell in the final reel. I think it’s almost compulsory for an entry in this genre to cap things off with a spine-tingling twist, but for every Angel Heart or Identity or Reeker that delivers the goods, there are dozens of others that do little more than induce groans. Fortunately, Triangle is of the former category.

When Jess arrives at a marina to join some friends on an afternoon expedition, she appears dazed, confused—she begs the captain, Greg (Michael Dorman), who harbors a secret crush on her, for forgiveness. And when the young, brawny deckhand, Victor (Liam Hemsworth), inquires about the whereabouts of her son, she stares into space long enough for a caterpillar to make its way from Chicago to LA before telling him that he’s in school. But something doesn’t smell right about that answer: it’s Saturday. Oh, well, it’s time to lift anchor and hit the high seas.

For a while, it’s smooth sailing, but then, out of nowhere, a terrible storm arises, dismantling the boat (it’s been christened the Triangle) and committing one of the secondary characters to Davy Jones’ locker. The survivors float along with the wreckage for hours until they’re presented with what they think will be their salvation, but what we horror aficionados know will be their damnation: a mist-enshrouded ocean liner so big it evokes the Queen Mary 2. After crying out to the lone, shadowy figure on the ship’s bridge, our castaways are at long last rescued, but once on board, they can’t find any passengers, let alone a member of the crew. There’s no captain, no first officer, no doc, no Isaac, no Gopher. Only adding to the mystery is the sprawling, scrumptious buffet set up in the ballroom, as well as an eerie message written in blood on a washroom mirror in one of the cabins. Jess, who’s seized by a profound sense of déjà vu, gets cut off from the others, but when she meets back up with them, Greg and Vincent are dying from gunshot wounds and the rest are accusing her of having pulled the trigger. But before Jess can make sense out of this horrifying scene, a masked kook pops out of the shadows and blasts the remainder of her pals into smithereens. Jess comes close to buying the farm, too, but she’s tough enough to overpower her assailant and then toss him/her overboard. But her nightmare has only just begun: As she watches the killer disappear into the water below, she sees herself and her friends floating along the remains of the Triangle, calling out to her for help. We’re forced to reexamine the preceding episode time and time again through the eyes of different parts of Jess’s personality, all the while wondering if she’s snapped her cap or if she’s fallen through a rip in the fabric of time or if she’s actually dead and serving an eternity in Hell for some great sin. Ultimately, Triangle raises more questions than it answers, but as far as mind-fuck movies go, you can’t do much better. (Just don’t bother watching it with a left-brained type; such ambiguities tend to hurt their pointy, little heads.) Smith and company obviously invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears in putting this thing together, but all that effort would’ve proved futile had they not been particular when casting the role of Jess. Thankfully, George isn’t your typical scream queen; she’s an actress of great emotional depth. And yet her style is so natural and unfussy that it’s easy for those who don’t know spit about acting to pass her over at those silly award banquets. If there were any justice in Oscarland, George would be collecting the kudos—not that overrated android Meryl Streep. 

March 28, 2010 

© Copyright 2010 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.