10 Horror Movies Nobody Understands
7. Triangle (2009)
The vastly underrated Christopher Smith has had horror fans talking for a decade now about this existential horror flick, and for good reason.
A slasher-on-a-ship flick crossed with Groundhog Day, Triangle is a nightmarish downward spiral. The twist is that Melissa George's protagonist Jess is both Final Girl and killer at different points in a time-loop... probably.
You see, Smith’s 'time loop' isn't a science fiction concept but a metaphysical one. We know this, because we see the cumulative effects of every single loop - the piles of identical corpses, for example. This would only be possible if Jess were the only person being looped - but she's not, because the other five people on the boat are also affected.
Are they all being looped while the world turns about them? Or is there something far more strange going on?
The ship is named ‘Aeolus’, after the father of Sisyphus, the mythical sinner sentenced to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a hill, only to be forced to begin all over again. The ending certainly implies that Jess is being punished, but that doesn't explain the others... unless they're part of the punishment. Are they even real?
Unlike Groundhog Day, or Natasha Lyonne's Russian Doll - or even Doctor Who's greatest ever episode, 'Heaven Sent' - Jess never meets the conditions for escaping the loop - if there are any.
Is she doomed to repeat it forever? And just how many more corpses can the Aeolus hold?