Triangle

In Triangle, the first film watched in class, I try to understand what really is horror as a genre. In the reading, the general introduction of Jancovich on horror, he quotes Russell on the basic definition of genre; It explains on having the role of a monster sprouting sprouting conflict against the normal. But this definition is a more classic version. Triangle debunks the typical content of any horror film. It adds a new dimension of the “horror feeling” through a psychological concept. Learned Helplessness is a psychological concept where humans and animals endure and “learn” a kind of suffering or pain.

Throughout the movie, there is a feeling of being dragged until the end. More than an emotion, there is the reality of how repetition is also an entrapment.It reminded me of Karl Marx’s notion of alienation; There is a level of multi-dimensional detachment on the part of Jess—distant from reality and from herself. Reality because of the circumstances where she tries to escape from all her friends being killed, and her son being left behind. The situation where she is in is already her “reality”. More importantly, she is separated from herself. She could have had controlled on what can happen next. She could have been on her own sanity. But because she had accepted her fate, there is nothing else she could do. In a way, she is dehumanised by the conditions because of this kind of detachment.

I noticed how Jess’ character was established is ironic with her entrapment. As a mother, all she wanted was to be with Tommy. Tommy has a mental illness and he demands a lot of attention; That is why I understand how desperate Jess is just to be with his son. With her friends, she sounds cold and stern. Aside from Greg, she instills leadership when they were having troubles with the yacht. I find her very controlling and somehow rigid. Jess character show how she want manage things but with her circumstance, she cannot seem to go her way out of it.

Also, the yacht accident itself reminded me of the Bermuda Triangle, the mysterious area in the ocean where things and people get lost. The mysterious and eerie feeling gives a sense that there was already something twisted, especially when Jess had a dream of lying down by the shore. The movie was a creative interpretation of the unknown.

The movie plays on the unknown and mystery. There would be scenes in the movie where things were questionable as to why this happens or why this appears. An example is at the start of the movie, when the doorbell rang and there was no one there. Later on, scene would make more sense when the movie reveals that there were many versions of Jess. Whenever a version of Jess is unsure of a thing, she would find out that it was the doing of another Jess. The unknown here becomes more terrifying when one finds out that all along her enemy is her own self. When I rethink of the movie, it is all the versions of Jess that adds up to entrapment. The more she tries to escape the more she stays within the repetition.

The latter and end part of the movie made full sense because it goes back to the beginning. It was very cyclic when everything was connected with everything else. Jess resigned to her fate and she knew that it will happen again—an allegory of Sisyphus form the Greek mythology. This is my favourite part of the movie’s take on entrapment and repetition. Sisyphus was punished that is why he had to endure pushing a rock up even if he knew that it will fall down again. I tried to understand if Jess was punished for something as well but maybe it was also connected with her being a mother. There could have been a history why she was a single mom and why her son turned out to be mentally ill. Like Sisyphus, Jess had to accept her situation and she needed to be “good” at it. She needed to do “well” in shooting her friends, hurting her son, fighting back, etc. Being “good” at the what she repeatedly do is her only way to somehow combat with her situation.

Triangle has opened me to a new meaning of horror. The genre does make he audience just stay on the emotional level. There is also discourse that makes it more significant and relevant.

Looking at A Different (Tri)angle

Triangle by Christopher Smith is a movie that revolves around Jess, a mother of a child with autism. The movie begins with Jess tightly embracing his son around his arms, with a gloomy setting and background music that gives you just enough goosebumps to set a horror vibe.

During the first scenes, the mother/son relationship and Jess’ sad and distraught face gave a psychotic aura. I was expecting that the movie would revolve around Jess and her son and how they would deviate from a typical mother/son relationship in a creepy way. However, as the movie went on, I became confused. The movie continues with Jess hanging out with her friends by the harbor, sailing their yacht, and just having a good leisure time. The movie was slow paced, and it gave out confusing clues as to what is to happen next, what the movie is all about or even what kind of horror film it is.

During the first half of the movie, I was constantly thinking as to why the movie started with an emotional scene. I was pretty much bored until their yacht gets caught in a storm that obviously came out of nowhere. After this scene I became interested in the movie, especially when they survived, when they couldn’t find Heather, their friend, and finally when they found this ship that they thought would save their lives. Little did I know that the following scenes would just ruin my expectation of being scared just like how Mark Jancovich described a horror genre.

The movie continues with a series of perplexing scenes.

1. They could not find anyone in the ship.
2. The ship gave Jess a déjà vu.
3. Certain clues in the ship hints that they were being fooled by someone, possibly a human but can also be a ghost.
4. There was an emphasis in the myth of Sisyphus.
5. Killings happened.
6. Jess discovered that there were several Jess in the ship and that she was the one who has been killing everyone the entire time.
7. Jess tries to escape the cycle, ends ups on a shore, and somewhat finds her way home to save her son.
8. Jess saw another Jess in their house and killed that Jess for her son.
9. Jess and her son got into an accident and her son dies.
10. Jess seemed to have escaped her death, as it seemed like no one can see her during the accident scene (just like the myth Sisyphus).

 

The movie was pretty confusing the entire time. There were a lot of time loops that made the movie even harder to understand. I wasn’t really sure which events actually came first in real time. Even the foretelling and the ending of the movie seemed to make you not figure out the movie on purpose. I’m not really sure if that should make me like or hate the movie as I was expecting the film to be a stereotypical horror, and my idea of horror is a totally different thing from what I saw. The movie did not make me scared. Frankly, I was annoyed by it. With the build-up of the movie, and the absence of the ghost that I was expecting in the ship, I wouldn’t classify the movie as horror.  But if you look at the movie in a different angle, say it’s not horror and it’s a mystery thriller or psychological thriller film, I think the movie was pretty good. If only I didn’t expect the movie to be horror then the unpredictability and the confusion would’ve made the movie interesting and not frustrating. Moreover, in a mystery thriller kind of movie, not figuring out the entire story would only make you like the movie more as it leaves a lingering confusion that would make you think about the movie every time.

Honestly, had I not had any expectations before watching I would have loved the movie. Until now, I still find the movie puzzling. The only thing that was answered at the end of the movie was that Jess was not able to save her son. I still don’t know whether Jess was really alive. Did she really kill everyone in the ship? Was she able to stop the cycle? Was she really able to escape death? There were a lot of unanswered questions that seemed to leave an open ending. Hence, I have two main theory for Triangle. One is that Jess was psychologically ill and everything was just inside her head and thus, the entire movie was just a dream. And the other still involves a psychologically ill Jess, however, this time the events that happened in the movie were stories she made up in her head, and actualized in real life so as to pretend and make herself feel that she was able to save her son.

 

Sources:

Jancovich, Mark. Horror, The Film Reader. London: Taylor & Francis E-Library, 2002. PDF.

Three Angled Triangle

Triangle is a movie that is an absolute psychological (if you don’t mind me using the term) clusterfuck. It takes great detail to watch carefully as the confusing start ends with a clear finish. It’s very much comparable to the myth of Sisyphus who was given the task to roll a giant stone up a hill only to see it roll back, thereby making him go roll the stone up again in a never-ending cycle. The beauty of Triangle however is that in the Aeolus, there will always be three Jesses which shows three sides of her. One is the sympathetic “nice” Jess that seeks out for her companions. The second Jess is brutal and ready to kill for the sake of her son. Finally the third Jess is the one that gets killed and never gets to go to the boat trip. The other characters will only have two of them every time in the ship where they get killed in different ways. We also see the cycle repeat itself to the boarding of the yacht aptly named the Triangle through a simple taxi driver that offers Jess a ride after the car crash where everything happens all over again.

The way the story intertwines with itself is what makes the movie so amazing. The continuous cycle is amazingly portrayed through the constant life and death, living and reliving our normal state of life. We focus here on the life and death of man in general. We have no control on how we die, but how we live is the most crucial part. Jess appears as a nice mother, but was also capable of hurting her child and even more frighteningly, to commit murder. She lacked the conscience to even accept her son’s death. There will always be another chance, she thought, there is always the possibility of creating a new future where she and her son survives at least. But there never was a second chance, she’s dead.

We can claim her death because the time on her watch stopped. As if her time halted specifically for her, much like Gregg’s watch stopping at a different time from Jess’s since they died at different times. On deathbeds, the time of death is always duly noted and this is the same case with Jess and her companions. Heather one the other hand, did not suffer with them. During all these events, we can conclude that Heather is not part of the cycle because she is in truth, alive all along as the sole survivor. The deaths of the characters are even portrayed in the beginning of the movie with Gregg and Victor dying in the storm without lifejackets and Downey and Sally drowning in the room they are trapped in. Jess’s death however is seen near the ending, specifically in the car crash which is why her time of death as shown in her watch, is different from the others.

The inevitability of the cycle as the movie progresses shows a form of fatalism that can be seen in our own lives. The cycle of life and death is inevitable and inescapable. We cannot recover from it no matter what. This is proven time and again as the cycle restarts from the personification of Death in the movie: the taxi driver. Yet the peace of death was not granted to Jess particularly because of her sins. This is where we can infer that Tommy died because of Jess: in two possible instances. Jess possibly killed him after spilling paint on her sun dress and stuffing him in the duffel bag, or in an alternate way through the car crash. This is further supported because in Tommy’s alternate death, Jess killed her other self that we saw in the beginning of the movie. It is unlikely that she would kill herself for merely slapping her child after all. She must have don’t something far worse to resort to murder, and that sin is also murder.

As the viewer, the movie thrives in curiosity which I constantly fed to it as I tried to understand its machinations one step at a time in my first playthrough. However there were certain scenes which weirded me out really, for example Victor’s death. Victor, a well-built man had his skull shoved through by a nail by Jess. Sure, anatomically-wise, there are certain soft spots which makes it likely but I highly doubt a woman of Jess’s size is capable of putting enough force to cause a puncture wound that deep. Another discrepancy is the shotgun. In the fight between Jesses, we see that the shotgun was dropped in the ship, not out of it. Why was there no duplicate of it then? We see the notes having multiple copies but not the weapon. Is it a plothole to prevent other characters from “stumbling” into the weapons? I don’t know. But nonetheless Triangle was an amazing movie which captivated my curiosity and attention til the very end. I rate it 9/10.

Triangle

Triangle, as the 1^st movie for this horror film class, was definitely not what I expected it to be. Coming into this class, my general idea of a horror film was a ghost movie like The Others or Amityville Horror, very much centered on ghosts and hauntings.  At 1^st I thought that the ship was haunted, I had watched a movie with that plot before and even began to wonder if maybe this was the film I was thinking of, but as the film progressed it was made clear to me that this was not the case.

While the film was certainly not what I expected from a horror film class, I was by no means disappointed. I admit that I was startled a number of times during their initial foray into the ship by those sudden shootings and deaths that came out of nowhere. Usually the characters die 1 by 1 over the course of the movie, but there their entire gang was killed off so early on, which really surprised me. Seeing the rest of the gang die with Jess being the only survivor, I immediately felt such a heavy burden placed on her. It was still early in the film meaning that she would have to face whatever horrors awaited her alone, and she was clearly yet mysteriously, not in the best condition.

Once it was revealed that the events going on had to do with time travel or a time loop, I expected things to start unraveling and moving in a straight path towards the end destination, whatever it may be. I immediately thought of the 3^rd Harry Potter movie’s use of time travel/loop and thought it would play out the same way and everything would be clear but Triangle, much to my delight, was a lot more complicated and a lot smarter than that.  The question that really wracked my brain, as I’m sure it did other viewers as well, was why the succeeding versions of the events played out differently from the way that we initially saw and yet not break the loop and end with Jess’ escape. This in itself was some type of horror for me because I could not make sense of what was happening, and I found that very troublesome. At one point there were 3 or maybe even 4 Jess(es)  on the ship at the same time. I really feel that most people would not be able to make complete sense of what was happening in the time loops on their first viewing of the film, and I actually feel that this worked in favor of the film. The knowledge is left out of our control and we just have to keep watching to see it unfold and to hopefully a better understanding.

Eventually we see our Jess recreate the events of the initial timeline that we saw, and we are shown how the loop goes on. This actually is a parallel to the story of Aeolus that the characters talk about when they 1^st arrived on the ship. He was punished by having to push a boulder up a hill only to have it roll all the way back down then repeat the process over and over. We see this happening to Jess, but what we don’t know is why. What exactly is the power that is causing this loop to happen, and how did it even begin? The film does not go into detail about this, and it can be frustrating to some.  What I feel is more important that the film shows, is why the loop continues to go on. Jess cannot accept the death of her son caused by her actions. Earlier in the film she mentions that she feels guilty when she is not with her son, I think that the guilt she is feeling here is actually guilt over the death of Tommy. I feel that the Taxi might have actually been death coming to bring her to the next life, but instead of going with him she breaks her promise to come back and instead gets on the boat, therefore continuing the time loop that is serving as some type of purgatory for her. Other might view the taxi as simply a taxi and nothing more. This sort of open-endedness allows for audiences to think for themselves and assert their own interpretations which I feel is a good move, it allows the audience to be more engaged with the film.

Overall, I really enjoyed the film even if it is not what I imagined I would be watching for a horror film class. I cannot say that I was actually scared at any point in the film, at least not in the same way that I normally am during horror films that I am more accustomed to. It brought with it its own brand of terror, something a lot more human and psychological, which can make it even more disturbing than a film focused on the supernatural.

After viewing this movie, my ideas of what a horror film are have been challenged. From what I’ve seen and from the introduction in our readings, I realized that there is so much more to the horror genre than I thought. I personally consider myself a horror film fan but clearly I have such a limited view on what horror movies are and it’s clear that there is so much to learn about it.

 

Triangle

Many horror movies use the theme of survival as it easily sets an eerie and tense atmosphere. It plays on the viewer’s curiosity and keeps them at the edge of their seats. Will the protagonist survive? What about her friends? Who will emerge bloodied, battered, but still undefeated? While Triangle is not your typical horror movie with a vengeful spirit or a hideous beast, I believe it still falls under the category of horror and psychological thriller.

I’ll admit though that I probably would not have classified this movie under the horror genre if it weren’t for the discussions in class or the readings given to us. At the start, my definition of a horror film was closer to David J. Russell’s. According to him, basic horror films are “[…] centered around its monster character, and the conflict arising in the fantastical and unreal monster’s relationship with normality.” There has to be an external manifestation of an entity, obscured by mysterious supernatural circumstances. What I realized, however; is that the horror genre isn’t just limited to or comprised of films riddled with cheap jump-scares, blood-guzzling monsters, or ghosts with tragic backstories. Horror films can come in the form of what Hartwell calls  psychological metaphors. Now, this is what I believe can be the most terrifying type of horror. Subject to much stress and drastic situations, one can surrender to a blurred way of thinking or a catastrophic mental breakdown. More than spooky specters, the conflict plays out in the theater of the mind. For me, as this is the most real/relatable type of horror scares me the most.

Although the movie wasn’t my typical horror movie, it was still not free from cliches. The pace and the setting of the film started off quite calmly. Great weather, clear blue skies and serene waters. The perfect day for a boating trip with friends. Then without warning, the film takes a sharp turn and catches the characters in the onslaught of a thunderstorm. When the skies clear, the characters spot a mysterious ship. What I find funny in most horror films is that even when there are so many ominous clues, the characters tend to disregard them and try to quench their curiosity instead. Jess was already wary from the beginning and seemed like she knew something her friends didn’t. Although its obviously very telling, as usual, the rest of the characters don’t listen and eventually end up dead. An entertaining twist, however; is the one that gave the warning, ends up murdering everyone else. Come on, why would you still stay on the ship when it seems like its “crew” (Future Jess) is trying to avoid you or only watches from a distance.Moreover, the character in horror movies always think splitting up is a good idea. A+! From then on, the viewer already knows it’s going downhill. The final girl trope is also ever present in this film. All the other characters died within a few minutes of the movie. At first, I didn’t know what to feel as I was expecting longer flight or fight scenes. But in the end, the movie didn’t disappoint as the viewers were placed in a never ending loop with the characters. The premise was pretty cool at first, but it eventually got boring and overly predictable.

As the story is non-linear and operates in a closed timeloop, one really has to pay attention to the details– Jess’ backstory, the setting, and the premise. I honestly thought that everything was just in Jess’ head as she seemed to be so dazed from the beginning of the movie. Unfortunately, as the plot thickened, it was not just in Jess’ mind, but the reality she was in. Why was Jess trapped in the loop in the first place? Is this some sort of punishment? Who is Jess really?  Is she really a psychotic killer or just a concerned mother? What was the point in making her kill everyone in the first place? At the end of the film so many questions remained unanswered. Or perhaps this is where the supernatural aspect of horror kicks in. Perhaps the movie is entitled Triangle because its set in the Bermuda Triangle, where numerous unexplained events happen.

When the bell rang and the lights went on, many of us had puzzled looks and were dying of info overload. Weeks later, I still find myself thinking of the movie. Maybe what constitutes a good horror movie is not just the fleeting scares one gets from pop-up ghosts, but the feeling of creeping uncertainty and unsatiable curiosity.

Triangle

Horror is both an emotion and a genre. However, when a film does not necessarily scare a person that does not mean that it stops being a horror film. After watching Triangle, I didn’t immediately think that indeed it was a horror film since it lacks the monster or the perceivable source of horror that I am used to seeing when I watch horror films. However, after looking at the plot and what exactly happened to Jess, the main character, I realized that it was actually more of a psychological horror film, which is very different from zombie movies and vampire movies. I had no clue at all with regards to what the movie was about. Unlike my usual habit of looking at the summaries of films on the Internet, I decided to not spoil myself.

I found the movie interesting that I was really making sure that I wouldn’t miss a scene. After watching the first few parts, it was inevitable for me to just be more hooked and more curious about what was going to happen. Different from other horror films that have a lot of jump scares, the thing that makes the audience watch more is the fact that they reveal certain information all throughout the movie that actually lead to the person watching to want more or have the feeling that they need more. Of course, the viewer would want to understand the entire movie—the events that were happening, the reason behind why those things were taking place, the effect of these occurrences to the characters, etc. And the lack of knowledge or information would make it difficult for the audience to comprehend what they are seeing.

This was pretty unexpected. However, given that we are limited to the perspective of Jess, that we can only know what she knows, I felt immersed in the film. As she was being lost and trying to figure out what was happening, we were being lost with her. It is as if we are being pulled back to the Aeolus with her, so that we can uncover the truths behind the ship and the things that were taking place together with Jess. Moreover, there were even moments, wherein I felt like I was being dragged forcibly by the character for the reason that, in other movies, we get to see the perspective of all the character, which is why we have this feeling that we know more than the protagonist. While in Triangle, there were instances where Jess already figured out a certain thing so she moves on to the next one, but I was still trying to process the previous one.

People might actually think that Jess was merely going crazy that is why she was experiencing all those confusing things. But apparently, she was already stuck in this unending loop of events. Watching the film, we get to know more about who Jess is as a person and as a mother. All throughout, we see how she cared so much for her son that her only motivation to be able to get off the ship was to have the opportunity to see her son again. Although, as the cycle reaches to their home, we discover that she was actually an abusive mother towards his mentally challenged son. With that, I think that, as a punishment for being a sadistic mother to Tommy, she was stuck in a causality loop so that she would have to relive the same day for the rest of her life. Perhaps the source of horror in this film was the feeling of being trapped, and instead of being trapped in a particular space, Jess is trapped in a particular time. I couldn’t imagine how bad it feels to be so helpless, because unlike other traps there is a possibility for the person to be able to escape from it, but with this one, it is just impossible.

The film actually contains a lot of symbolisms and metaphors that in a way could help the audience to be able to understand what was happening, for instance, the very name of the ship. There was one scene wherein a character reads the information about the Greek god whom they got the name of the ship from. He was called Aeolus. Apparently, Aeolus is a Greek God, who breaks a promise to death only to roll a boulder up a hill and watch it fall down while repeating this action forever as a consequence. This can be treated as something that sort of reveals the fate of Jess.

Triangle-ang-gulo

For the past years of watching ‘horror’ films, I already established a personal checklist of what a horror film will contain. This checklist is a technique for me not to jump or shout out during the surprising scenes or the run-for-your-life-away-from-the-creepy-murderer scenes that usually bring excitement and stress over us viewers. It includes the typical “get ready because something creepy with jump out of the screen any moment” when the thriller soundtracks plays or the “this knife with be used later to kill that douche dude, ready yourself for the bloodbath later” when the character is preparing food. Yet the thing that really attracted me to this film genre was the story line behind every murder or peculiar phenomenon. The stories fascinated me yet this semester’s horror film class started with a peculiar film which made me question my impressions, clichés expectations and understanding of what a horror film really is.

The film we watched for our first meeting was entitled, “Triangle” and I can’t really say I enjoyed it. It started slow with the prologue showing the mother hugging and comforting her hysterical son. Despite the confusing scene, we all know that this will be explained or shown in a key part of the movie and I continued to patiently wait for the storyline to progress. The following scenes continued and I was constantly trying to guess what would happen next or what the connection of these scenes are to the storyline. Take for example the scene where the ship was getting closer to their wrecked yacht. The ship appeared after a storm that suddenly engulfed them and I was already thinking of explanations in my head as to why the ship and the storm happened. I was thinking of a parallel scene in the film Ghost Ship where the ship had a thirst for blood of lost seafarers and abducts them into the cursed ship. It was clear that the ship that rescued the passengers of the wrecked yacht was cursed or in the mildest sense, weird. That scene gave me an affirmation that something weird and tragic would happen to the passengers and it would be brought about by one of the characters.

As the film continued, there were snippets that affirmed my typical notion of what a horror film is: mysterious aura brought about by the mother’s blank and distracted state during the start of the film, one by one deaths of her fellow passengers, a change of heart by the mother into the character that fought back the unknown murdering entity. Despite these preset, I was not prepared with the revelation that this unknown murderer was in fact the mother. She looked blank and distant during the start of the film yet seeing the change in her character as the film progressed was surprising, entertaining and then horrific.

When the mother was confronted with the reality that she was trapped in that cycle, she tired changing its course. She wanted to save her fellow passengers yet every time she tried, she kept failing. It was horrific seeing numerous pendants, bodies, clothes, guns and other notions that seem to say that she will be trapped in that ship cycle over and over again whatever she does to save everyone. Hints of the deeper story was revealed when her anchor, the son she abandoned, was mentioned. That the only way that she can go home was by finishing the cycle, by killing everyone. Despite her conscience saying otherwise, she pulled it off and was able to get home.
We are presented with the very first scene yet this time, the story was told in a different and deeper way. We see her negligence and abuse towards her son. We see her change of heart and her determination to make it up to her son to the point of killing her abusive self and saving her son. During this part of the movie, I was slowly getting relieved. All horror movies end with the protagonist’s triumph over the evil or suffering she was in and this movie was just one of them. Yet, I was in for another surprise: the cycle was not over yet. The scene where she threw the dead bird over the sea and seeing the numerous bird carcasses on the bank was like a mockery saying that all her efforts were futile in the end. The deeper reason of the cycle was then revealed: she wanted to save her son from death.  It was tragic and saddening to think that she had to repeat everything again to have another chance to change what happened. Yet it seems that she will never be able to get out of this cycle. This trapped state seemed to be the horror in the film.

Triangle

A triangle is a geometric figure with three straight sides and three angles. All of these sides are connected and, when traced with a finger, can go on and on and on endlessly, having only 3 corners as turning points or “stop points”. This precisely is what the movie Triangle by Christopher Smith is trying to show in its well-thought-of film.

The movie features the main character, Jess, having a really strange occurrence in a boat called “Aeolus”, wherein she seems to be experiencing the phenomenon Deja vu, or the feeling that the events right now has already happened before. As the whole story progresses, it seems to be true that she has already gone through the whole loop numerous times, and thus confirming her Deja vu-like feelings.

There were a lot of instances in the first parts of the movie (as the group entered the Aeolus) which pointed to the loop-like design of everything that is occurring in the movie. Other than Jess saying, “I know this place,” when they boarded the ship for the first time (supposedly), the first clue that the movie gives was when Jess heard a set of keys drop, only to find out that the keys were hers. Of course, in the latter part of the movie, we realize that the keys was really dropped by the “second” Jess, but having no knowledge of that, one would question, “How did that get even get there?” Other small clues prior to Jess’s discovery of the loop include the large number of dead bodies Jess finds when Sally dies, Jess seeing the other dead birds the “past” Jesses threw by the seaside, the numerous crumpled notes found on the floor having the same hand writing as Jess, and many more.

One of the major clues to everything having a repetitive structure was with the analogy of Sisyphus. The group found a symbol/statue of Sisyphus in the Aeolus, and they explained that Sisyphus wronged the gods and was given a punishment of rolling a huge stone up a hill, only to see it roll back again as the boulder reaches the top. This analogy is very similar to what happens to Jess, since, in the movie, she strives to get out of the loop so that she could once again see her son, Tommy. She kills different characters, including her (other) self, as a desperate attempt to claim her son again. However, in the end, after the car crash, she realizes that her son has been and will always be taken away from her in the loop. Jess’s struggles to get back to her son represents Sisyphus’s rolling of the boulder to the top of the hill, but the death of Tommy shows the boulder rolling back down to the bottom. It was shown in the movie that, like Sisyphus, Jess couldn’t get out of the loop because she decides to go back to the Triangle again by being taken there by the cab driver.

The three turning points or corners in a triangle were represented in the movie by the three personas of Jess present in the ship all at the same time. Without each and every Jess being there, the continuity of the cycle would never be fulfilled. For the sake of discussion, I will name the three as “Clueless”, “Informed”, and “Desperate” Jesses. Clueless Jess is the Jess that enters the ship for the first time (or so she thinks). She’s the one who has no clue whatsoever why everything seems so familiar. She’s the one who tries to make sense of everything. Without her, Informed Jess wouldn’t be present. Clueless Jess turns to Informed Jess when the second group enters the Aeolus. When Informed Jess realizes that everything in the ship happens again and again, she is the one who really attempts to get out of the loop to save her son Tommy. Desperate Jess emerges in the latter part of the movie, after Tommy dies in the car accident. Having full memory of everything that has just happened, Desperate Jess goes back to the Triangle just so she could be part of the whole loop once more. She is very desperate to see her son that she was willing through the whole terror of an experience all over.

As a movie fan, I thought Triangle was mind-boggling, especially with loop-like structure it tried to portray. It was very much successful in doing this structure, in my opinion, because it gradually revealed the repetitive flow of the series of events in the story. However, in the latter parts of the story, I didn’t find it as entertaining anymore because the revelations (of the structure) seemed unnecessary and/or over-emphasized already. I mean, for me, we already get it; everything repeats itself. Jess can’t get out of it. For me, the conclusion could have been made faster since the point of the story has already been established well.

I was surprised that this movie was shown since I didn’t consider these types of movies as part of the genre. I always perceived horror films as those that had a lot of “jump scares”, were overly intense, or contained tons of gore scenes. The type of genre that Triangle fits in, I believe, is a mystery-thriller. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t say that the film isn’t a great movie

Triangle

Triangle would have to be the kind of movie wherein you sit and wonder what is going on. Not just on what’s happening with the plot but also whether or not this is a horror movie. I will admit that though I wasn’t terrified there were a horror elements that can’t be ignored.

The “monster” is probably the most basic element of the horror movie and to add to the question of horror in the movie, the “monster” in Triangle was not something that had a physical vessel that the audience could be fearful of.

There are scary elements within the movie. The “monster” would be a disturbing event and I wouldn’t want it to happen to me. I would still be able to call this a horror movie because in theory the event they were trying to portray is still horrific. The uncertainty that shrouded the event will continuously make you worry for the characters. Also the fact that the protagonists herself was pushed to her limit and made to do crazy things she never thought she would do. The reveal at the end was also something that made you question every part of what you thought. Like I said in theory it should all work. Nothing about this movie was pleasant, nothing about this movie was “nice” to watch. It could have easily be placed within the horror category.

But the thing is it was not effective as a horror movie because from the start the protagonist was super sketchy. It was very unlikely that you would identify with the character. You could never imagine that the horrific event was happening to you. You could tell that there was something up with her that the twist in the end though saddening was not surprising either. The other characters weren’t given the time of day either so their deaths weren’t something that made you upset. When your protagonist is so unreliable, like the one given in Triangle, you immediately question everything that is presented in front of you. Nothing is at it seems, nothing is as scary as it seems. The movie could have benefited from establishing some trust between the viewer and the movie.

Even the side characters in the movie made you feel like the protagonist was not to be trusted. They didn’t really have much of a character for themselves but you could see that they served to make you distrust the protagonist. All of the factors within the movie were screaming that this girl was not to be trusted. So the twist at the end wasn’t much of a twist. The event in itself was surprising but the fact that the protagonist wasn’t as innocent as she made herself out to be wasn’t a surprise. I feel like that took away a lot from the movie. It wasn’t exciting in that aspect and it didn’t make me feel nervous because I already knew she was going to do something evil. I could already tell that she was in some way, shape or form was going to become the “monster”. It would have been better if she appeared more normal at the start. It would have been best to trick the mind of the viewer as to confuse them and get them to pay attention to the movie.

I also feel as if the “monster”/event wasn’t explained well and wasn’t developed well. I mean I get that there should be some mystery but you never really understand why this particular girl was chosen. Again, in that sense you can never actually picture it happening to you. You were quite curious during the movie but your curiosity is never satisfied. It was just a strange event that happened to this particular girl that will probably never happen to you. But I have to give the movie a few points for the curiosity factor, which is important for horror it’s just that the unveiling of the narrative was weak which leave a viewer unsatisfied and aggravated with the contents of the movie.

My basic takeaway from the movie is that if you never picture it happening to you it lacks the opportunity to play on your fears and get into your mind. Getting in your mind and placing itself on your fears is the main goal of any horror movie. In the end I can say that the score was pretty good and there were a few disturbing images but other than that the film didn’t impact me greatly.

Triangle: A Personal Hell

An underrated film that goes by the title Triangle was released in 2009 and was directed and written by Christopher Smith. The film starred Melissa George, as the seemingly disoriented but enigmatic Jess. Triangle’s lack of hype around its release date could possibly be pointed to the fact that this film wasn’t your run of the mill horror film. Most people who’ve seen it would probably consider this as more of a sci-fi, mystery thriller, maybe along the lines of Shutter Island (2010) or even Donnie Darko (2001). Nevertheless, even with the confusion of its genre, Triangle did not fail in serving its purpose of presenting the idea that maybe the greatest monster of all…is yourself.

From the get-go, this film screamed “mysterious”. From its first scene, to the cryptic edit in the opening credits, until the first plot point where we encounter the strange storm that came out of nowhere that eventually led Jess and her friends to their untimely doom. As we go along with the film, I personally couldn’t help but feel like it was merely leaving breadcrumbs for us to eagerly follow until we finally understand the complexity of what it was trying to say. Throughout the film, as we followed Jess, it appeared as if she did nothing but run. Physically, as she was escaping the murderous maniac in the ship, and mentally, as she was avoiding to fall into her future self’s evil acts. Jess went on tremendous lengths in trying to understand how she could outsmart, outrun and out-plan her unfortunate destiny, but her desperate attempts to escape her problems only added more fuel to her personal hell.

In this somehow sadistic way, we are just like Aeolus as we continue to watch Sisyphus—or in this case, Jess—lead up to the same finale but with slightly different means in between for the sake of entertainment. The notable Easter eggs that come here and there in the film is what makes each excruciating journey with Jess more bearable, as it helps you build the pieces in understanding the reasons as to why Jess is being punished this way. I personally find films with such a mysterious overcoat so much more alluring as it becomes a puzzle for me to figure out even after the credits stop rolling. The ambiguous taxi driver, the inexplicable self-murder, the multiple copies of a dead person by the ship all contribute to the horror that this film builds. Triangle, compared to the well-known horror films today like The Conjuring (2013), will inevitably bring up how the former isn’t “that scary” to regular viewers. It’s confusing at times, and it lacks those well-loved “jump scares” and “scary faces”, which is probably why the common notion of what makes it a horror film is still brought up. I personally commend its ambiguity though for the very fact that it isn’t like the rest of those commonly known horror films.

Triangle was not afraid to show the depressing reality of a desperate person trying to control her own twisted destiny, when this Fatalism presented in the film only shows that: an attempt. Just like many other films with the same theme, it was entertaining and occasionally disturbing to see how events would unravel even if we subconsciously know that the ending won’t be a good one. To clarify the blurred lines in this film if it would be classified as a horror film, I would say that it should. It’s not so much as the fear of the unknown, but a fear that you cannot escape the unknown anymore.  As Andrew Tudor mentioned in the introduction to “Horror: The Film Reader” edited by Mark Jancovich, people shouldn’t look for that “factor x” of a film in a genre, such as horror. People should just study the film and see its “patterns, shapes, etc”. Identifying that element of a film that makes it applicable to a genre is an “empirical question”, but the fact remains that films like Triangle still continue to creep you out. Even with the discussion of Triangle being an unconventional horror film, its structure of being horrific is what is significant, as Rick Altman has added to Tudor’s statement. The perception of a film being similar to every other genre film shouldn’t alter its effective elements, like how Triangle, as mysterious and dramatic as it is, doesn’t fail to scare you.

Triangle, with its main premise, holds much promise since it ignited unique plot points and interpretative scenes. A person resisting fate could only lead to so many predictable endings but Triangle managed to execute it in more than entertaining ways. Although, since it is a film that deals with the possibility of multiple realities for the lead character, logic and rationale could ruin the film’s whole principle. As a fan of time travelling, paradoxes and alternate worlds, Triangle impressed me with its unconventional horror antics and organized set-up, but it inadvertently gave the chance for the audience to raise too many questions that would ultimately spoil the fun of it “being scary”. Nonetheless, with its distinct way of presenting a horror story, I still prefer films like these that deal with more than just exorcising the demon, or battling with the monster. Jess’s struggle in confronting the monster inside her and naturally finding ways to defeat that is what is the most fearsome of it all. The idea of realizing that you are the evil one, and that you are to live out your hell for the rest of your life is what disturbs me the most. And if that isn’t scary, then I don’t know what is.