Saturday 17 October 2009

Triangle




British director Christopher Smith's third film is aptly named for the three sided shape and the film has just as many angles as its geometric counterpart.

Single mother Jess (Melissa George) joins some friends for a days pleasure sailing. From the moment Jess turns up on the dock her behaviour seems off, she has trouble remembering where her autistic son is while she is taking the day off and seems to be lost in her own thoughts. During the sail the yacht hits an area of sea conspicously absent of weather. Suddenly a massive thunderstorm capsizes the vessel leaving the would be sailors adrift on the upturned hull. The next strange occurance is the arrival of an abandoned cruise ship Aeolus under full steam with no apparent crew. As the group explore the ships interior Jess catches glimpses of someone else aboard and is plagued with feelings of deja-vu as a tangled weave of multiple ongoing story threads unravel and then gather into a non-conclusive whole.

Part slasher, part mystery, part time-travel tale Christopher Smiths story unfolds in a non-linear fashion manipulating the expectations of the audience taking expected beat points and moving them around the films timeline. It is not the first time this technique has been applied and here it allows the movies journey to be a twist orientated Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode. By no means confusing this is a movie to surrender to, just let it happen and be entertained as you figure out each twist just moments before it happens.

Quite hard (especially at Melissa George)