Time travel is one of the most complex and compelling concepts in movies. It is not the easiest for any filmmaker to pull off. Christopher Nolan recently took the world by storm with Tenet. Lost is also a show that deals with time, if not time travel. And even classics like Back to The Future. A subcategory of time-related movies is the time loop – where a character has to experience the same time over and over again as part of their character development. Some of the examples are classic like Groundhog Day, Palm Springs to the more recent Edge of Tomorrow, and Happy Death Day.
Most films in the time loop concept follow the structure of starting and resetting the day at the end or at the character’s death. While this is usually the case, the 2009 movie Triangle reinvigorated the time loop by introducing loops within loops. This raised an interesting question regarding the leftover debris from a never-ending loop.
The story centers around Jess as she went on a yacht trip with her friend. However, they hit a storm and their boat turned. They were in luck as they board a ship named Aeolus and were hunted by a masked murderer. The dread of the empty ship as well as the suspense of the killer on the loose adds to the stake of the movie. Jess also has to find a way to return back to her autistic son.
At this point, it is impossible to discuss the movie without spoiling it so; SPOILER ALERT.
What sets the movie different from other time loops movie is how it doesn’t lay out one loop after another. This movie instead uses the perspective of one character, experiencing the time limbo. The events of the film take place within the same couple of hours jumbled over each other.
Jess is actually the masked killer and as the movie progresses, we see more Jess appeared implying that this is not the first time for the main character.
In Groundhog Day or Happy Death Day, the loop resets fully with no consequences. But Triangle’s time loop shows that there is a residual effect every single time. For instance, there is a scene where Sally, another protagonist, crawls for her safety and ends up in a part of the ship surrounded by corpses, all of them hers.
This time loop forces Jess to haunts her demons from the past. As Jess safely got on land, she returns home. But it wasn’t what she expected. She actually went back to the day before she went aboard the yacht. She watches her past self hit her son due to her temper. Filled with regret, she killed her past self and took her son.
It reveals at the end that she actually died in an accident with her son before the boat trip. As the single mother to a child with special needs, Jess is experiencing hardship more than others. She lost her temper for a moment, causing her a lifetime of regret.
This leads to her refusal to move on and the end of the movie shows Jess aboard the yacht again, ready to start the loop again and hope to do things differently. Unlike other characters in time loop films, there is no way to stop the cycle.
The movie is also rich with Greek references. This movie is actually the retelling of the story of Sisyphus – a man who breaks his promise to Death. As a punishment, Death makes him pushed a rock up a mountain only to have it roll back down once he reached the top. In other words, it is a futile task but he is powerless to stop himself. It is the same thing with Jess, as she saves her son even though she is stuck in the loop and will never be back. This happens as she refused to move on and breaks her promised to Death.
A painting referring to Sisyphus can be found on the ship. The ship’s name is Aeolus, a reference to the Greek god of the winds and it shows how the wind is important for seafaring. It is a physical embodiment of the Greek god’s involvement in the loop.
Although Triangle underperformed at the box office, it has gained cult status. The movie is emotional, bloody, and thematically rich, which is not often in Hollywood horror.
Source: CBR, Millennium Entertainment