Welcome back to Movie Recapped.
Today I will show you a mystery, fantasy, sci-fi film from 2009, titled Triangle.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
The opening scene introduces us to Jess, the main protagonist of the story, as she is preparing
for a boat trip with her autistic son, Tommy, and her friends.
Jess is rushing through the house, almost erratically, taking out a flipped toy boat
from the pool.
Tommy is painting as Jess is still packing up things and having trouble persuading him
into leaving the house as she also cleans up after him.
A peculiar, but trivial thing happens right at the very start as Jess is making final
preparations – the doorbell rings, and when she opens, there’s no one at the doors.
Jess leaves home with Tommy but arrives at the harbor without her son, where her friend,
Greg, is waiting for her.
She meets Victor, a troubled teenager living with Greg, who asks her about Tommy.
She boards the boat named “Triangle” where she meets Greg’s friends, a married couple,
Downey and Sally, and Sally’s friend, Heather.
Victor considers Jess’ behavior to be very peculiar, questioning why she didn’t bring
Tommy when there is no school on Saturday.
Greg assures Victor that Jess is all right and that Victor should treat her nicely.
The group sets their sails to the sea, and very soon they are faced with a major storm.
They manage to pick up a signal for a call for help as they are trying to get the coast
guard on the radio.
The storm takes the boat out and turns it over, sweeping Heather off the ship and right
into the ocean.
The rest of the group manages to climb the top of the overturned boat as the storm settles
down.
The group sees an ocean liner, Aeolus, which seems like a great chance to get rescued and
taken out of the sea.
They get close to it and board the ship.
However, they don’t find anyone.
Jess tells Greg that she feels like she recognizes the corridor as they are looking for signs
of life on the liner.
Victor, Downey, and Sally interrupt Jess and Greg, finding a framed photo of Aeolus dating
from 1932 – the same ship they are on.
It is revealed that Aeolus is the Greek god of the wind and the father of Sisyphus, a
mythological character who cheated Death and was condemned by the gods to roll the same
rock up the hill every day for an eternity just to watch it roll back down again.
The group discussion gets interrupted when they hear the sound of clanking on the ship
and realize that they are not alone.
As they follow the sound, they find keys that Jess recognizes as her own.
She is incredulous but certain that those are her keys.
The rest of the group is also having trouble believing that while Jess insists that the
keys belong to her.
Sally tries to rationalize the situation and suggests that Heather must have survived somehow
and climbed the same liner, so she must be the one who brought the keys.
The rest of the group considers the theory to be farfetched.
As Sally insists that they should look for Heather on the ship, the group stumbles upon
the ballroom where everything seems to be set up for a party, but there is no one around.
The tables are set up for dinner and food is abundant, but Jess can’t miss the fact
that her watch is showing the same time as the clock on the wall in the ballroom – 08:20.
As the group debates about what they should do next, Jess sees someone running across
the hallway and tells the rest of the group.
Victor immediately rushes off after the mysterious person and keeps searching the deserted corridors
while the rest of the group remains in the ballroom.
Greg decides to go after Victor and Jess follows him although he urges them to stay in the
ballroom and wait for Victor.
As Greg and Jess and looking for Victor through the eerie corridors, Jess is trying to convince
Greg that she had been on the same liner before, but Greg tries to rationalize her claims by
suggesting that she feels guilty because of Tommy.
They get distracted by the sound of running water and decide to check what it is.
They find a message “Go to Theatre” written in blood in the mirror.
Victor is still trying to find the person that Jess saw running in the corridor, following
the sound of clanking across the liner.
Jess is terrified by the fact that they found blood on the mirror while Greg suggests that
the crew might be fooling around and messing with them.
They go into an argument and Jess walks away, leaving Greg, determined to get off the ship
and get back home to pick up Tommy from school.
Greg tries to apologize, but Jess walks away regardless and returns to the ballroom alone.
Jess hides at the sound of thumping close to the ballroom and sees Victor stumbling
across the room all covered in blood.
Jess is in shock and tries to find out what happened, but instead of an answer, Victor
starts strangling her.
Jess struggles for her life but eventually manages to push Victor off.
Still in shock, Jess snaps out at the sound of a shotgun and rushes to see what is happening
only to arrive at the theatre where Sally and Downey are crying over Greg who had just
been shot.
Jess is shocked at the sight while Sally jumps at her and accuses her of shooting Greg.
Jess defends herself, but Sally tells her that Greg said she shot him.
Jess reveals that someone attacked Victor and that she was with him when Greg was shot,
however, Downey and Sally are growing more suspicious of her, questioning why she told
them to come to the theatre.
Jess tries to convince them that it wasn’t her when someone starts shooting from the
balcony.
Sally and Downey get shot, and Jess flees the theatre after she tries to help them.
She hides in the kitchen and takes a knife to protect herself from the masked shooter
who is after her.
Jess reaches lifeboat stations in hopes to get off the liner, but the shooter finds her.
They wrestle over the shotgun and Jess slips away.
The shooter doesn’t give up and chases Jess across the upper deck.
After missing Jess a couple of times, the shooter throws a shotgun at her as she falls
over the fence to the lower deck.
Jess takes an axe she finds on her way and uses it to defend herself as the mysterious
attacker reappears.
After Jess puts up a fight and overmatches her attacker, she demands to know his identity.
The attacker erratically replies that the only way for Jess to get back home is to kill
them.
Jess then hits the attacker with the axe without unmasking him and the mystery person falls
overboard into the ocean.
As she tries to recollect, she gets distracted by the sound of music coming from one of the
nearby cabins, playing on loop on an old record player.
She hears voices coming from outside as people are shouting.
Jess carefully walks over to the deck and out of the cabin, only to see Greg, Victor,
Downey, Sally, and herself on the flipped boat shouting out for help.
Jess is in shock and frightened as everything seems to be in an eerie loop, so she runs
away and hides while listening to the group that just boarded the sea liner, including
herself.
As she hides from the group, Jess witnesses the same events that happened only a while
ago when she boarded the ship and gets back to the bathroom where she found the blood
writing on the mirror with Greg.
She can hear that the group is looking for her, calling Heather.
She realizes that she was the person they were after the entire time.
Jess returns to the corridor outside the ballroom and listens in on the group, which is where
she is seen by her other-self.
She runs away as Victor goes after her.
Victor finds Jess on the deck surprised that she got there so fast, thinking that he is
talking to Jess that he just left in the ballroom with the rest of the group.
Jess tries to be honest and explain to Victor that something strange is happening on the
ship, telling him that her copy is downstairs with the group as they speak.
Victor can’t quite understand what Jess is trying to tell him as she tries to explain
that everyone’s bodies are all over the ship and that they were all here before.
As Jess erratically tries to convince Victor to believe her that the entire group will
die, he dismisses her.
In the heat of their argument, Jess grabs Victor by his head as she tries to explain
everything and accidentally pushes him against a hook in the wall that ends up in the back
of Victor’s head.
Shocked by what she did, Jess runs away, leaving Victor.
While having a breakdown, Jess finds a bundle of crumpled papers with the same message on
them “If they board kill them all”.
Jess has a final transformation into a killer she was running from.
She finds a jumpsuit and takes a shotgun.
As Jess contemplates what she is supposed to do to get off the liner, she notices her
locket hanging from the grid on the floor.
She looks down and sees a pile of necklaces just like hers which is when the same locket
on her neck slips and falls down the grid as well.
She realizes that everything is repeating and starts packing ammunition.
As Jess heads out to get her friends and her other self, desperate to get off the ship,
we are witnessing past events from another perspective, following Victor, Sally, Downey,
and Greg before they were all killed.
Jess stumbles upon Victor, having him at gunpoint but assuring him that she will make everything
right and get everyone off the ship.
She sees herself entering the ballroom, and lets Victor go, now aiming at the other Jess.
Instead of strangling Jess in the ballroom as in the previous scenario, Victor is now
struck by seeing two of Jess.
Unable to shoot at her other self, she lets the other Jess getaway.
Happy that at least now Victor believes her, she tries to make him remember that everything
happened before and that he tried to strangle her.
She is interrupted by the sound of a shotgun, rushing to the theatre and leaving Victor.
Knowing that someone will shoot Sally and Downey who are standing over Greg’s body
as before, Jess pushes them away and they miss the bullet as they find their way out
of the theatre.
Sally and Downey follow Jess as she tries to explain that everything that is happening
has already happened before, suggesting that they might be able to change the pattern.
Sally and Downey are having trouble with following up with what Jess is trying to explain to
them, but they are desperate enough to try and make sense of everything.
Jess leaves them with a shotgun to get back for Victor and tells them not to trust anyone.
Instead of Victor, she finds a trail of blood leading to the dock.
She hears a shotgun as Downey fires and runs back to them.
Before Jess reaches Sally and Downey, another masked Jess tries to deceive them into believing
that she is the one who left them with a warning not to trust anyone.
Downey is cautious at first but soon agrees to follow the other Jess.
Jess tries to warn them by shouting out across the corridors, but her other self manages
to lure Sally and Downey into a cabin where she stabs them.
Sally gets away from the deadly trap as Jess continues to stab Downey, which is right at
the moment when the well-intentioned Jess runs into Sally.
What we learn is that every version of Jess, well-intentioned or cold-blooded is motivated
by the desire to see her son again.
Jess stumbles upon a radio while she is looking for Sally and catches Greg’s call in distress
just before the storm overthrew their yacht.
The signal gets interfered so Jess moves on to look for Sally.
She finds her among more than a dozen versions of Sally lying around dead.
Jess tries to comfort her and convince her that she didn’t kill Downey, which is when
she sees one of the versions of herself killing another Jess.
It is when Sally dies in her arms that Jess realizes that the yacht returns when everyone
dies and she once again witnesses the group boarding the liner.
Jess tries to stop the liner but with no success.
As she climbs the docks, she hears a version of herself accidentally pushing victor onto
a wall hook.
She walks away without revealing herself which is when she finds Downey lying in the pool
of blood in the bathroom.
She writes “Go to Theatre” on the mirror with Downey’s blood then she disposes of
the body.
Jess then encounters another version of Sally and Downey waiting for Greg and her in the
ballroom and tells them to meet Greg at the theatre.
Jess puts on a jumpsuit, takes a shotgun, and puts on a mask as she heads to the theatre.
With the mask on, Jess listens to a version of herself as she leaves Greg after an argument.
Jess follows Greg to the balcony in the theatre and shoots him after having second thoughts
and after Greg realizes that Jess is actually behind the mask.
She then proceeds to shoot at Sally and Downey as another version of herself walks in on
Greg.
Once again, Jess manages to escape as now the masked Jess is taking over the role of
the attacker she was running from at the beginning.
We see the cycle repeating, but now from two different perspectives, a masked Jess is going
after a version of herself that is now hiding in the kitchen.
The pattern repeats once again as two versions of Jess end up on the upper docks, caught
up in a dynamic fight that will lead to masked Jess being thrown overboard by an axe in the
head.
Before she falls, she tells the version of herself not to let them board and to kill
everyone if she wants to get back home.
After falling into the ocean, Jess ends up on the shore and finds her way home.
She is standing outside her house and can hear herself preparing for the trip on the
yacht, but instead of seeing the loving version of herself and the patience with Tommy that
she has at the beginning of the movie, we can see that Jess is abusive towards her autistic
son.
That abusive behavior is what drives the version of Jess outside the house to ring the doorbell,
which explains the scene from the beginning.
Jess uses the doorbell as a distraction so she could enter the house, waiting for the
abusive Jess to come back in.
She smashes her head with a hammer and finally gets to hug Tommy.
After she packs up the abusive, now dead Jess into the same black bag we seen her pack up
before the yacht trip at the beginning, Jess once again heads out with Tommy with the black
bag packed in the trunk.
As she makes a promise to Tommy that she will never hurt him again even when he does something
wrong, A seagull hits the windshield, and Jess parks by the road.
Tommy gets upset all of a sudden as Jess decides to go over to the dead bird to move it from
the road.
As she walks over to the edge to throw the seagull into the sea, Jess notices that there
is a pile of dead seagulls in the same spot, realizing that a pattern is repeating.
As they drive away and Tommy gets more upset, Jess is trying to calm him down which leads
to a fatal accident.
As people gather to help Jess and Tommy who seems to be a lost cause, Jess is seen standing
aside and observing the scene, unharmed.
As she watches her son die, she takes a taxi to the harbor and falls asleep.
When Jessie wakes up, she is at the harbor and the cab driver tells her that he will
keep the meter running and Jess promises to come back as she boards the yacht once again.
She meets Victor but doesn’t seem to recall knowing him.
She boards the yacht once again, not completely aware of the reason why.