Triangle

Epic Spoilers Follow


Okay, so I just got back from seeing Triangle. The trailer is here, in case you haven't seen it.

So, this is one of those films where everything apart from the plot is really good. Sadly, the plot completely ruins it.

Although, it should be stressed that it's more the rules of the internal universe that ruin the film, rather than the plot.

Triangle is essentially two films:

1) It's a Terminator style film where everything is set and every action taken by a character in the future causes someone in the past to react in such a way as to enable the future actions to happen.

2) It's a 1408 style film where the world is out to get the characters but if they fight hard enough, they can change things and potentially save themselves.


To make this easier, I'll give you a potted sumary of the story. I'm putting plot holes in bold for easy reference later.

Act 1:
The characters meet up on a boat. The lead girl, Jess is extremely spaced out. They go out sailing and run into a storm, which capsises their boat.

Act 2:
They go onto a ship which happens to go past their capsised boat, no-one is there. They hear footsteps everywhere but see no-one. They are killed off one by one until Jess disarms the murderer (who has a gun) Jess throws the murderer overboard.

Act 3:
Jess then sees her group board the ship as they did in act 2 and realises that it is all happening again. She grabs one of the group when the go off to look round and accidentally kills them. She then grabs a gun and threatens herself form the past. Past Jess then runs off. Jess then tracks down two of her mates and gives them the gun. She then tries to find her last friend to get them together and get them off the boat. Then the murderer appears and takes off its mask, it's Jess. Let's call her Future Jess. Future Jess then kills her two mates and disappears, saying that she loves her son. Jess finds her mate, dying, and promises they'll get off the boat. She then sees herself at the start of the act noticing the arrival in act 2.

Act 4:
Jess realises that there's an oppertunity to get off the boat every time a new act starts or, to put it another way, every time all her mates die. She can get back onto the capsised hull of their boat from Act 1. So she kills all her mates in exactly the same manner as she did in Act 2. She gets pushed over the side by Past Jess from act 2.

Act 5:
Jess wakes up on a beach, she realises she's back in her home town and goes to her house. She sees herself being a violent bitch to her son and kills Past Violent Mum Jess. She then takes her son and gets in a car crash, which kills her son. She then re-enacts the rest of Act 1.

The End.


Now.

If we take acts 1,2 and 4 by themselves, this is a standard film based around the laws of Pre Determinism. Everything Jess does leads to her going mental and killing her mates.

The problem arises with Acts 3 and 5. Let's take act 3 first.


Act 3:
There are now two extra Jess's wandering around that aren't dealt with. Past Jess, who Jess threatened with the gun and Future Jess who killed her mates and said she loved her son. These two are never seen again.

Act 5:
Jess choses to go back on to the boat, knowing she'll get to the ship again. This one isn't so much of a problem because in Act 1, Jess basically has a break down, goes to sleep and thinks she's had a bad dream. The problem arises when Jess dresses the same as she did the previous time.


This is a problem I had with the television show Flash Forward. Any time you think the future is determined, you just have to change the smallest thing and it's suddenly not. Take Jess, for example. In Act 5, if she wanted to get onboard again so she could go round again and not kill her son, she should have made sure things would be different and, for example, not taken her shoes. Then the cycle is different all ready, things will go in a different way.

The Future Jess character in Act 3 does heavily suggest that she does manage to change some things but that's never dealt with so it just comes across as a mess.


You see the problems I'm having with trying to analyse this film? It's not internally consistent thanks to the two sets of rules it uses.




There is one final problem with Triangle and it, again, relates to the rules of the world.

There is no antagonist, other than Jess. In Act 2, one of the characters explains that the name of The Ship refers to Sysiphus' father (Sysiphus was the guy cursed to push a boulder up the hill again and again because he broke a deal he made with death)

This wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't the only explanation we have for why the events of the film are occurring.

To go back to the film 1408 for a moment - Everything in that film is explained by Samuel L Jackson's words "It's an evil fucking room". You go in the room, the room drives you mad and gets you to kill yourself. Simple.

In Triangle, we're given no hook, we have no idea why the events of the film are occuring, why it is Jess who is allowed to survive the acts, why there aren't dozens of other people on this ship going through their own personal hell...

Also, as far as I know, no-one in the film made or broke a deal with Death, so that explanation only serves to be annoying.


Films like this really need an antagonist - even if it's just the ship itself. There needs to be something controling or instigating or changing these events because otherwise there is nothing, NOTHING to stop Jess in Act 3 from meeting the gang on the deck of the ship and going "Hi chaps, we could have a problem"