Triangle Review

On-stage with writer-director Christopher Smith (Creep, Severance) at the Film4 FrightFest 2009 to introduce the world premiere of Triangle, lead actress Melissa George seemed to commit the near-criminal faux pas of revealing a major spoiler. In fact this apparent clanger, while certainly not a red herring, did not and could not undermine in any serious way the experience of viewing Triangle - for when a film is as dizzyingly complex, as impenetrably labyrinthine and as diabolically ambiguous as this, spoilers just do not apply (although they will still be avoided in this review).

Seeing Triangle once, or indeed several times, will not provide some magical solution to the unfolding mystery - but it will suggest a number of possible routes through its misty narrative, all of which you may well be traveling for days afterwards. Yes, this is a film that haunts the mind, and no single word or phrase can give the whole game away.

When Jess (George) is invited to join Greg (Michael Dorman) and some friends for a day trip on a yacht (called the Triangle), it seems a welcome opportunity to escape, however briefly, the constant stresses of being single mother to a young autistic boy (Joshua McIvor). The boat, however, is overturned in a flash storm and the pleasure-seekers find themselves scrambling aboard a giant ocean vessel (the Aeolus) that has emerged out of the fog. Although one of the party does catch a glimpse of a person on the upper decks, the vast, luxuriously appointed ship appears to be otherwise deserted. Then a masked figure starts taking out the lost travelers one by one, as a distraught, desperate Jess begins (or at least continues) to chase her own tail, in flight from, and pursuit of, a fate that seemingly cannot be eluded.

The key effect of Triangle is disorientation, as we are made to feel as lost, confused and hopeless as Jess herself in her vain struggle against the darker aspects of her own nature. In keeping with the film's shape-based title, Smith achieves this disorientation through the twisted geometry of a narrative which, though certainly looping back on itself, is less a circle than a mobius strip, full of puzzle and paradox. And - again in keeping with the title - the film presents viewers with three aspects, one psychological, one supernatural, one mythical, and leaves it entirely uncertain from which side the story is best viewed.