The Triangle (SPOILERS!)

[RedTide]

If you've seen the Triangle, this is a new thread to discuss it. If you haven't leave now. The movie is best seen if you know nothing about it. No wikipedia viewing and no reviews; don't even look at the poster. It's an interesting horror movie. My guess is that reactions will be mixed, I myself am not sure yet what i thought about it. It's available instantly on netflix, and there's a non-spoiler thread about it.








Spoilers

Ok, so I have a couple continuity questions. When she gets on the boat the first time (for the viewers), why does she do the deja vu stuff? She doesn't just think she was on there, she actually was. Why act weird? Does she forget while she's sleeping or something? What are the rules for the dead bodies? We see the 20 different redheads all lying there, but no one else. The second time the people come back, when she tries to save them. We see Jes watch herself kill her other self (confusing right?), so wouldn't they not come back because there are still 2 Jes's? What's with the food the goes rotten? How does that make any sense?

Ok, I know these are very nit picky, but they bugged me.I just felt like both Primer and Timecrimes did a better job with a similar idea. That said, it was still an effective movie.

[Andrew Mayer]

The thing is, I think its supposed to be a mobius strip.

So when she comes back the second time, that's when she should be "Headshot Jes", and as long as the body falls into the water there won't be a pile.

But we never see the full loop, because the film breaks it off by having her fall asleep and reset.

The problem is that
A: There would be a pile of bodies by the side of the road (of her and her son), and
B: You can't have the loop occur where it does, because Jes would never remember anything to become "Headshot Jes".

TimeCrimes was, and I hesitate to say this, a lot more consistent.

[RedTide]

So when she comes back the second time, that's when she should be "Headshot Jes"

Right, so she kills herself the first time. She's alone on the boat, and then it's reset. She hits Victor in the head, but then she confronts "herself" and Victor. Then she goes to the theater and tries to resolve everything, but "Jes with Bag on head" shoots at her. How can there be 3 of them? Instead of going from 1 to 2 we go from 1 to 3.

[Wholly Schmidt]

I don't think it's nitpicky at all, it's touching on what I see as legitimate problems with the movie.

The Jes we follow throughout the movie (other than the very beginning, which we only find out later involved two of them), we'll call her "Jes Prime."

My first problem was figuring out how things were layered on the boat. In the first "loop" we witness, we see everyone get on the boat, Jes Prime eventually confronts a masked Jes, and when they fight it out, masked Jes goes overboard. Now the second loop begins, and at first it seems obvious what will happen: Jes Prime will do everything the masked Jes just did in the first loop. It's going fine until the confrontation with Victor back in the dining room, where Jes Prime clearly deviates from what masked Jes did in the first loop because she confronts Victor and the "new" Jes from the second loop. Ok, at this point the twist has twisted further. I'm starting to think it's going to go all Primer on us (lots of overlapping layers).

But my initial objection to the movie starts here. This second loop ends with Jes Prime, after having followed the red-head up to the pile of red-heads, looking down as new Jes, and a masked Jes (right up until this point, Jes Prime being on her second loop but still not wearing a mask, we're thinking maybe it's going to be on her third loop that she actually dons the mask herself) fighting with the axes and stuff again, but this scene ends with new-Jes killing masked Jes instead of masked Jes going overboard.

Ok, so now you've lost me. Everything keeps repeating (tons of redheads), but obviously not reliably. We never see Jes Prime go through that same confrontation that ends in one Jes killing another (I mean on the boat) as either the killer or the victim. It's no longer a series of interlocking layers, it's now just the case that clearly this keeps happening, but there's not a definite rhyme or reason to how it plays out each time.

It's sending a sort of mixed signal that no, things don't happen the same way each time, and yet at almost every turn there's evidence that yes, this particular thing has happened many times.

I slowly came to terms with it in that vague, fuzzy sense, and the movie was kinda still working for me. Don't try to analyze how the pieces fit. They don't really, they just keep happening sort of haphazardly. Ok. Roll with it. We go through Jes Prime's third loop, where she's the masked Jes, which ends in the way the first loop did with the masked version going overboard, only now that's Jes Prime, and we follow the story off the boat as she washes up.

Cool twists, ok, she comes back, kills herself at home, the beginning is explained, roll credits!

Or at least, they should have.

Cause now here we go, pelican to the windshield, ok, all this has clearly happened before. She's not out of the loop. She's just run the course of the smaller loops inside the bigger loops. The script was written with a spirograph.

Crash, bang, guess Jes Prime had better catch a cab to the dock and do it right this time, roll credits, now the movie doesn't work. There's been no indication throughout Jes Prime's experiences that she's had anything more than a fuzzy déjà vu regarding what has happened in the previous loops. But as the movie ends, there's nothing to make us think she has now forgotten those experiences. So the movie is ending in a decidedly different place than it started. As far as we can logically assume, she's heading onto the boat with full knowledge of how it all plays out. Now is when things should get interesting, right? Shouldn't this be the start of the third act? Or is the point just that she will always be in this loop, but here is what it looked like the very first time it happened? Well what's the fun in that?

There's also the question of why any of this happens to Jes in the first place. I'm not asking for you to explain a spooky ghost ship, I'm ok with that as the central conceit of the movie, but there's no explanation given for why Jes is in the middle of it. Why isn't anyone else vaguely aware of the looping? I mean, you could argue it's because they're not surviving any loops, Jes is killing them every time, but that doesn't work for me. Maybe you'll disagree and think I'm splitting hairs here, but I can live with the macguffin being turtles all the way down. The ghost ship is stuck in a time loop because it is, because it is, because it is, because it is. Fine. But as it applies to our protagonist, I need a little more explanation for why she starts killing people in the first place, why they all have to die for her to get out of the loop. What makes her special to this story?

I think the reason this all disappoints me most is that there was a line about how her son gets upset if she doesn't do everything exactly the same way. That would have been a great fit as the theme for the movie, and I was hoping it'd be the impetus for why this is happening specifically to Jes. I was even entertaining theories based on her opening consolation to her son about nightmares that this would turn out to be her nightmare, maybe literally, a breakdown from her struggles with her child. I was almost ready for this movie to pull off "And it was all a dream" in a satisfactory way.

But if they really meant the movie to work on that level, they completely ruined it. First by blurring the logic in the looping--removing the exactness that would have made it a thematic fit, and then leaving us with a non-ending as she starts the whole thing over with memories apparently intact, something that should have been explored itself instead of offered as a conclusion.

[Wholly Schmidt]

It's cute the way the button at the end of my response still said "Post Quick Reply".

[MatthewF]

Here was mine. Remember the first time she's in the ballroom, and the dude stumbles in with his head all bloody and tries to kill her? We later find out that it was because she accidentally pushed him and a peg in the wall went through his head, but then when the next group arrives she changes that part of the loop by going after him with a shotgun. Her "new" other self then runs out of the ballroom, after clearly seeing her own self, and is never seen/mentioned again. What happened to that Jes that ran away?

[RedTide]

What happened to that Jes that ran away?

We see her hack up the "Bag Head Jes" that Jes prime shot at. Right?

[MatthewF]

Crap. Now I'm going to have to watch it again. Sigh.

[Wholly Schmidt]

We see her hack up the "Bag Head Jes" that Jes prime shot at. Right?

But then we never know who that bag head Jes is, if that's not the bag head Jes that Jes Prime eventually becomes (who obviously does not get hacked up).

Every way I can interpret it, it points to the pieces not cleanly interlocking. Which is ok if the movie goes on to be satisfying in some different way, but it never really does.

[RedTide]

Crash, bang, guess Jes Prime had better catch a cab to the dock and do it right this time, roll credits, now the movie doesn't work. There's been no indication throughout Jes Prime's experiences that she's had anything more than a fuzzy déjà vu regarding what has happened in the previous loops. But as the movie ends, there's nothing to make us think she has now forgotten those experiences. So the movie is ending in a decidedly different place than it started. As far as we can logically assume, she's heading onto the boat with full knowledge of how it all plays out. Now is when things should get interesting, right? Shouldn't this be the start of the third act? Or is the point just that she will always be in this loop, but here is what it looked like the very first time it happened? Well what's the fun in that?

Yeah, that was one of my biggest issues. How does this happen the first time? Because, her son never comes with them. But it seems like he was supposed to (but he can't cause he dies). But the first first time through (not the first time we see) why wasn't he on the Triangle? Also, since this time loop has been going for a while (meaning Jes Prime wasn't the actual jes prime), how does Jes Prime not know what's going on when she first boards. Is it explained by her falling asleep and having that bad dream that she doesn't remember? That the dream was supposed to be the sequence shes about to go through?

There's also the question of why any of this happens to Jes in the first place.

This bugged me to. For the original time through (which we don't see), before there were any killer Jes's, how did this reset get figured out? Did everyone else just accidentally die?


I don't need to have everything in a movie explained to me, I just need some internal consistency. That's what made Primer great. Even Timecrimes does this.

Edit:

But then we never know who that bag head Jes is, if that's not the bag head Jes that Jes Prime eventually becomes (who obviously does not get hacked up)

Yeah. Like I said earlier, in that situation there are 3 jes's running around. Which shouldn't be possible.

[MatthewF]

Timecrimes was awesome with continuity. I especially liked how they made it easier to follow the story as it progressed by naming each time-travelled version by number. Like, the first to go back is Hector 1. The second to go back is Hector 2. Etc.

[Andrew Mayer]

Edit:

But then we never know who that bag head Jes is, if that's not the bag head Jes that Jes Prime eventually becomes (who obviously does not get hacked up)

Yeah. Like I said earlier, in that situation there are 3 jes's running around. Which shouldn't be possible.

Well, it should be.

When Jes Prime loops back in then you have "Headshot Jes" who is the Jes that goes back for a second helping and is killed in the attempt.

Then you essentially have two (slightly) alternating timelines, one with "Headshot", and one without.

I'm guessing that was the original plan, and they punked out (or screwed up) somehow, and put in the dream sequence to cover it. The only thing that doesn't make sense from that point of view is Jes Prime arriving at the docs with her "kid in school", although you could see something else being the cause of that initially.

The only issue there is that the Highway should be littered with Dead Jesses and her dead sons.

[RedTide]

If it only resets when there's one person left on the ship, how could there be 3 Jes's? Even fi there can be 3, it doesn't explain where Headshot comes from.


Yeah, I agree that some of this stuff I'd be okay with letting go of, but that movie didn't really have anything deeper than the time-shifting aspect (I don't care about the characters, there's no deeper meaning or message). When that's the only part of a movie that matters you have to make sure it's real tight. I just felt like the movie was trying to go somewhere and never quite made it.

[Drastic]

I just felt like the movie was trying to go somewhere and never quite made it.

Thus all the Sisyphus referencing!

[malkav11]

Oh what the fuck. The Wikipedia page used to have a lengthy analysis of the plot that explained the Moebius strip timeline and described it as, essentially, her version of Sisyphus' punishment in hell, which all made a lot of sense to me. But it's not there anymore.

[RedTide]

Oh what the fuck. The Wikipedia page used to have a lengthy analysis of the plot that explained the Moebius strip timeline and described it as, essentially, her version of Sisyphus' punishment in hell, which all made a lot of sense to me. But it's not there anymore.

That's really unfortunate, I'd love to read some of the different theories. I just feel like there's something to the movie that I'm missing. It's like when you lose a couple pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. I want to like it, but I just don't. But I'm still thinking about it.


Yeah, I sorta picked up on the parallel with Sissyphus, but I just didn't get the point of that. Why is she in this hellish scenario?

[drake113]

I liked it better than Timecrimes, but only because Hector was such to complete chump in that movie that I ended up really hating him.

I'm still trying to figure out how her keys got on the ship in the first place-- Future Jess dropped them, giving them to past Jess, who later repeats the process, but the keys never leave the yacht with any iteration of Jess (or past Jess would have had her own set when the set from future Jess is found), so there wasn't an initiating chain of events to start the loop. Similarly, there were other events that didn't have a plausible initiation event-- the "Kill them all to get off the ship" note and the locket hanging from the grating, but I guess those could have been left by the original Jess Prime some 60 iterations prior and started behavioral echos in the subsequent Jess copies.

[Drastic]

Yeah, I sorta picked up on the parallel with Sissyphus, but I just didn't get the point of that. Why is she in this hellish scenario?

She was a crappy, abusive parent. Presumably that trait led to her doing something truly unforgivable; now this is the hell she's in. She can try to run from it, she can try to deny it and repress her memory of it, she can try to use violence and rage against it, but none of those things lead to escape. Those failed things have some strong thematic ties to an abuse cycle, I think. Granted, the "reason" for her hell-loops is never unambiguously shown. The ambiguity's part of the reason the movie worked for me, plus I'm a sucker for cyclical hells. (The "she's in hell" reading is also why the continuities apparently not quite meshing up* didn't bug me either.)

* I do vaguely recall the now-AWOL plot analysis, and it really is unfortunate it's gone away. There was apparently at least a couple recursive loops involved, but I'm fuzzy about that. Future me will leave a cryptic clue for myself, so I won't worry about it.

[Andrew Mayer]

Is this kind of stuff only fun because it's in modern day, or do you think a genre movie like, let's say, Event Horizon, would be entertaining if it had this kind of plot?

[malkav11]

I would watch almost any kind of movie if it had weird brainhurty timeloops and such. I promise nothing about -liking- the movie. (For example, Primer really didn't click for me.)

[Andrew Mayer]

It just hit me. The reason there's a pile of gulls is she killed the bird that went with them. Duh.

So no piles of kids then...

[Drastic]

Is this kind of stuff only fun because it's in modern day, or do you think a genre movie like, let's say, Event Horizon, would be entertaining if it had this kind of plot?

It would have worked in just about any setting past to future. Time loops aside, it's basically a haunted house ride for most of the length after all, and haunted houses can be set up anywhen.

[Andrew Mayer]

It would have worked in just about any setting past to future. Time loops aside, it's basically a haunted house ride for most of the length after all, and haunted houses can be set up anywhen.

I'm just thinking about it because TimeCrimes, this, and Primer are all modern day. But it's a lovely way to tell a story.

I will say that the "person in mask turns out to be YOU!" part is pretty weak in both movies.

[malkav11]

Woot. A delve into the wikipedia article's history produces this:

This film is an adaptation of the story of Sisyphus whose fate is for all eternity to push a rock up a mountain; on the top, the rock rolls down again and Sisyphus has to start over. Jess tries to save the lives of her son and friends only to watch them die.
There are two distinct phases to the total cycle denoted by A and B. Events happening in these phases are similar but not identical. By having an A and B phase the audience is fooled into thinking that Jess is altering the cycle when in fact she is simply playing her proper role in the alternate phase. In each phase there are three versions of Jess denoted by 1, 2 and 3. The phase alternates between A and B each time all the minor characters are killed and the tertiary Jess character is thrown overboard. The surviving two Jess characters advance from primary to secondary and secondary to tertiary, respectively and a new primary Jess character boards the ship.
A phase: (Film focuses on A1-Jess)
Once the group is on the Aeolus they read about the story of Sisyphus at which point A2-Jess drops her keys and they are found by the group. The entire group enters the ballroom of the ship where A1-Jess catches a glimpse of A2-Jess. Victor runs after A2-Jess and ends up outside where he is confronted by A2-Jess. A2-Jess accidentally fatally injures Victor. A3-Jess has her character shift and becomes the masked killer.
Gregg and Jess walk away from Sally and Downey and discover the note written in Downey’s blood to go to the theatre. A1-Jess walks away from Gregg and heads for the ballroom.
Sally and Downy are told to go to the theatre by A3-Jess. On their way they see blood trails from where A3-Jess dragged Greg's body out of the theatre. A1-Jess kills Victor in the ballroom after he attacks her. We are tricked into thinking A1-Jess then runs to the theatre but in fact A2-Jess shows up in the theatre. This is because after escaping the theatre unharmed this Jess obtains a knife. This knife is used by tertiary Jess in the next cycle to attack Sally and Downy in the bedroom.
A3-Jess kills Gregg, Sally and Downey in the theatre while A2-Jess flees the theatre and gets the knife. A2-Jess, with the knife, is on the top deck of the ship and is heard running by A1-Jess who is immediately attacked by A3-Jess. A2-Jess has no further role in the A cycle. A1-Jess eventually wins the struggle and throws A3-Jess overboard. The cycle is complete. A1-Jess becomes B2-Jess. A2-Jess becomes B3-Jess.
B phase: (Film focuses on B2-Jess)
B2-Jess resets the skipping record and then sees the new group about to board the Aeolus. In the hallway she drops her keys for the new primary group to hear and runs into the bedroom to see the note to go to the theatre written in Downey's blood. Downey was killed in the theatre in the preceding A phase so this note was made using Downey's blood from the B phase that preceded this B phase.
B2-Jess fatally injures Victor on the deck then goes below deck, scribbles another note “If they board kill them all”, takes a shotgun and loses her locket down the grate. This scene shows the audience that Jess cannot alter the total cycle and is in fact playing her proper role in the B phase of the total cycle.
B2-Jess prevents B1-Jess from killing Victor in the ballroom. B2-Jess then saves Downey and Sally from being killed in the theatre where Gregg is killed. Even though this Jess didn’t witness the theatre slaying in the A phase she is aware of B3-Jess’s location thanks to déjà vu. B3-Jess is grazed in the head by B2-Jess.
B2-Jess gives Downey the shotgun and goes to look for Victor. She returns to the ballroom where his body has been thrown overboard.
B3-Jess tricks Sally and Downey into following her into a bedroom where she attacks them using the knife she obtained as A2-Jess. Sally escapes with a fatal wound to her chest while Downey is killed.
B2-Jess searches for Sally who makes the distressed call to the next primary group. She finds Sally amongst a pile of dead Sallies and gives her the brown jacket.
A3-Jess finds A1-Jess and is thrown overboard after a struggle. When Sally dies the cycle resets. B1-Jess becomes A2-Jess. B2-Jess becomes A3-Jess.
A phase: (Film focuses on A3-Jess)
A3-Jess has a character shift when she realizes that she must kill everyone in order to save them. She goes below deck and writes “Go to the theatre” in Downey’s blood before dragging his body out of the bedroom and throwing him overboard. Next A3-Jess drags Gregg out of the theatre. Victor's body has already been disposed of.
A3-Jess tells Sally and Downey to go to the theatre then leaves to get another shotgun and become the masked killer.
When Gregg offends A1-Jess she leaves him alone and A3-Jess confronts him in a balcony above the theatre where Sally and Downey are waiting. A3-Jess kills Gregg, Sally and Downey in the theatre. A2-Jess flees the theatre and gets the knife which she will use as B3-Jess.
A2-Jess is on the top deck of the ship with the knife and is heard running by A1-Jess who is immediately attacked by A3-Jess. A2-Jess has no further role in the A cycle. A1-Jess drops down one level and grabs an axe. A1-Jess attempts to distract A3-Jess by throwing an object. A3-Jess remembers having done this when she played the part of A1-Jess and cuts her off. A3-Jess ultimately loses the struggle and is thrown overboard where she washes up on shore.
Jess goes home and we find out that the real Jess is abusive towards her son. The real Jess is killed by Sisyphus-Jess. In an attempt to escape the loop she puts the body in her car, takes her son and flees. She hits a seagull and throws its body onto a pile of dead seagulls. She gets back into her car and is involved in a head on collision with a truck. She escapes 'unharmed' and is greeted by a taxi driver. Sisyphus-Jess is in fact already dead and the entire film has taken place inside her constructed punishment.
It is likely that the loop started when real Jess, distracted because she was abusing her son, died in the head on collision along with her son. After dying, real Jess becomes Sisyphus-Jess. The cab driver, playing the role of Hermes, escorts her to the harbor where she will join the next primary group about to board Aeolus.

[Dean]

Just watched this.

I like the whole Sisyphus thing in the wikipedia article. It explains the miraculous taxi driver, if nothing else.

My first impression was that it kind of resets when she sleeps on the sailboat, basically because she was concussed in the accident, went to sleep, and then lost the memory of the previous loops.

Because what's a time loop movie without a little amnesia?

[Andrew Mayer]

AHHHHH. Now that weird bit near the car makes sense. That's why she's standing there unharmed after the accident.

[Wholly Schmidt]

It just hit me. The reason there's a pile of gulls is she killed the bird that went with them. Duh.

So no piles of kids then...

Huh? The reason there's a pile of gulls is she hit one with her car, she goes to throw it off the road, and that's the big reveal that David Bowie's machine was actually cloning the gulls, not transporting them!

Oh, sorry. I mean, that's the big reveal that we're still inside a bigger loop. It didn't end when she got off the boat, she's hit that gull on the road dozens of times before too.

Is that what you were trying to say and I just missed it, or were you saying the gulls mean something else?

[russellmz00]

hermes!? i thought the taxi driver was Death (that's right, i'm tossing out a capital "d" there). she breaks her promise to him of returning to pay the fare. countless dead, including an autistic child, for cab fare? death is hardcore about his monies. when she wakes up on the boat, her memory resets.

but i like the wiki explanation better. any reason given for the edit? was it the scriptwriter doing a wiki edit?

also: melissa george (jess) really does woman in horrific circumstances well. she was pretty good in http://www.netflix.com/Movie/The_Betrayed/70118227 which has the bonus of having a ridiculous plot point that was ridiculed in the simpsons...16 years before the movie was made.

[malkav11]

I would guess that people objected to such massive spoilers being in the only Wikipedia article about the film. I mean, the basic plot spoiler is spoily, but not quite so step-by-step. Either that or it was considered too subjective, or inappropriate for an encyclopedia entry, or one of those other things Wikipedia folks get picky about.

[Andrew Mayer]

Is that what you were trying to say and I just missed it, or were you saying the gulls mean something else?

I was saying it's the gull that followed the boat, which is why it's being duplicated in the "real world" but nothing else is.

I was hoping that we'd see it on the beach as well, but I went back and checked and it wasn't there.