Ninth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 Triangle

Let me first state for the record that I did not have high hopes for 2009's Triangle, starring Melissa George and the second best Hemsworth brother (who gets sixth billing).  I didn't much care for it when I finished it BUT when I read this Den of Geek review, I decided I liked it better in retrospect.  So, if you watch Triangle and aren't crazy about it, go click on that link and see if you like it more then.

With that rave opening ...

There are a couple of feints thrown into this little movie.  At first you think it's going to be a lost-at-sea/Bermuda Triangle thriller.  Six people board a sailboat (christened the Triangle): owner Greg, deckhand Victor (Liam Hemsworth), Greg's rich friends Sally and Downy (WTF kind of name is that?), Sally's friend Heather (with whom Sally is hoping to fix up Greg) and Jess (Melissa George), a girl Greg kind of likes but who seems really out of it.  After some sailing, they are suddenly becalmed and then a freak storm capsizes them, washing Heather away, never to be seen again.  RIP Heather.  Then, a cruise ship appears and the remaining five climb aboard.  Even though there is edible food still set up in the ballroom, and the engines are running just fine, they can't find any passengers or crew.  Until someone starts killing them off, one by one, until only Jess is left.  She battles this masked stranger and, just as she knocks her assailant overboard, the killer shouts, "You have to kill them all!"  Then Jess hears voices and sees the capsized Triangle, with herself, Greg, Victor, Sally and Downy on board, and she watches as they board the cruise ship again.

Then this little movie turns into a timeloop thriller, with Jess (but which Jess?) trying to figure out how to break free.  I'm not going to try to unravel the plot because I don't want to spoil anything.  I'm also not going to go into any detail about the third act either, because it totally changes the stakes of the game and was where my interest was piqued.  Throughout the course of the movie, the myth of Sisyphus is mentioned: as punishment for his sins, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, only for it to break free each time he reached the top and roll back down to the bottom.  In Jess's struggles to free herself from this loop, she experiences the same panic and desperation over and over again, unceasingly.

Truly, the more I read about Triangle the more I think I appreciate it - although it is absolutely not a horror movie but a thriller - I just feel like the first half of the script should have gone through a few more drafts before filming started.