Note: Spoilers below!
The 2009 movie Triangle directed by Christopher Smith revolved around Jess (Melissa George) who is a single mother of a special child named Tommy (Joshua McIvor) and who works as a waitress in a certain restaurant. The movie started with a depressing atmosphere and music showing Jess and her son preparing for the boat trip with her friend Greg (Michael Dorman). However, the next scene showed the arrival of Jess alone at the harbor. When asked where her son was, her answer was “in school”. Her unusual quietness already gave me a hunch that she was hiding something about the true situation and location of her son.
The story went on when she boarded Greg’s ship together with Victor (Liam Hemsworth), Heather (Emma Lung), and Greg’s married couple friends, Sally (Rachael Carpani) and Downey (Henry Nixon). Then, they encountered a storm which destroyed their ship. Afterward, the horrific loop of seeing her friends die many times in front of her as well as the revelation of her son’s death and her abusing her own child started as they boarded the ocean liner that passed by.
According to Mark Jancovich, horror has been one of the most interesting genres in the film cinema because of its design to captivate our worst fears and frighten us with dark, forbidden and alarming events. At first, watching the movie until the point they encountered a storm made it hard for me to classify this film under the horror genre because storms are just result of a supernatural instance. It will be disappointing if this movie just became a horror movie just because of a weird storm that was not detected by radar. Usually, the prevalent elements of a horror film are the presence of ghosts, zombies, extraterrestrials, demons, vampires, werewolves, witches, cannibals, psycho and serial killers, witches, monsters and weird wild animals. For me, it usually involves scary sounds and mutated creatures as antagonists. Movies that are supernatural are hard to be seen as part of the horror genre. As expected, it did not just end with their encounter with the storm because they entered into a horrific situation or loop as the ocean liner.
What made the movie Triangle a horror film is the presence of the horror elements such as the ghost ship, serial killer or psychopath killing all of her friends. It is also Jess’ situation that made the film a horror one. She did not just see her friends die in front her a lot of times but she also saw counterparts of herself. As discussed in class, David Hartnell has three streams of horror: (1) moral allegory, (2) psychological metaphor and (3) nature of reality. Her struggle to go home and destroy this loop is the moral allegory of the film, and her seeing her other counterpart killing her friends is the psychological metaphor – not knowing who the real one is. This made her also question her existence. Her situation had also made her become more desperate to go home and be with her child to the point that she also tried to kill all of her friends.
The name of the ship as well as the movie is Triangle. In geometry, a triangle is defined as a shape with three sides and three vertices. I believe that the movie is entitled Triangle not just because it is the name of the ship that the characters of the movie were riding, but rather because the movie has three messages, truths, points or sides like what a triangular shape has, that it wants to convey to its audience.
The three points or messages that I feel that the movie wants to convey to us the audience is (1) love – that we’ll do everything for our family, our loved ones, (2) guilt – that it will make you remember everything like a continuous loop, and (3) acceptance – that it is the key to escape the loop by realizing that you can never undo the past and your mistakes but just rather accept the truth or reality.
First, it wants to show the value of family love – the first thing where we felt and received from our parents and siblings. As seen in the movie, Jess did everything she can to go out of the loop – from analyzing her situation and from even killing her friends. As one will say, we will always do what we can for our family no matter what consequence we may face in the future. As for Jess, the most important thing she is thinking is to see her son again (even though it will be revealed that she abuses him and kills her because of her careless driving). One will always find ways for her family, to see them again or even to protect and help them survive.
Second, it wants to convey that the guilt will always haunt us. The number of bodies of her friends and her pendant that she has seen and was shown in the movie indicates how many times she has been repeating the situation all over again – from stopping her friends die and then eventually resulting to killing them. This guilt may also be a result of the death of her son (as seen in the near end of the movie). She enters this loop because of her guilt for not accepting the death of her son due to her impatience and carelessness. The guilt of losing her son has been haunting her forever.
Lastly, it wants to show that acceptance is the one that will help solve Jess’ misery to go out of the loop. She must accept that her son is gone and will never return again. She can’t change what already happened. She must not blame also herself for being an irresponsible and impatient mother to her special child (which also resulted from her to sometimes abusing him). It is through accepting the truth that her son is gone and moving on in life that will get her out of the loop and return back to the real world.
For me, the ending of the movie really showed me how horrific the situation of Jess was as it was concluded at the end on the movie that it will always keep happening again – riding the ship, encountering the storm, finding and going to the ghost ship, killing her friends, the death of her son and riding the Triangle ship again. There’s no end to her situation of seeing her friends die by her own hands or by her counterparts. For me, it is this loop that makes the movie be part of the horror genre because of the unending desperation, death, killing that the character experiences. I like horror movies especially those who have zombie and monster but after watching this movie it made me realized how psychological and unique this horror movie is. I realized and hopefully others as well that it’s not just about the psychopaths and monsters that makes a film a horror movie (even either as a good or bad horror film) but rather the uneasiness that target us the audience of the feeling of fear, disgust and nightmare like what I felt from Jess’ situation as she can’t accept the death of her son and as she tried to escape from the loop. I felt her trauma, desperation, and guilt of seeing and causing the death of her son. It was indeed a one unique horror movie that attacks the audience of how they can accept the truth such as death – showing that nothing will change no matter what you do. The past will just keep haunting you if you won’t accept the truth and move on with life.
Reference
Jancovich, M. (2002). General Introduction. Horror, The Film Reader (pp. 1-20). London: Routledge.
COM115.9 (2016) Course Blog 