10 Movie Characters Who Discovered That Their Universe Didn’t Exist
3. Triangle (2009)
Another movie which is open to multiple interpretations, 2009’s Triangle is a mind-bending exploration of the cyclical nature of trauma. The movie begins – if it really has a beginning – with a group of friends who go sailing, only to capsize in a storm and be left adrift at sea. Luckily, a passing cruise liner picks them up, but unluckily, the only passenger onboard is a masked killer who dispatches all but final girl, Jess, who manages to shove the deranged killer back into the sea.
But then, what’s this? The ship comes upon a capsized sailboat containing her still-living friends as well as her past self. At this point, her addled mind realizes that she’s in a time loop and that the only way to escape it is to prevent her friends and past self from boarding the ship. Unfortunately, they’ve already boarded, so she has to kill them all in order to restart the loop, meaning – duh duh duh! – she was the killer all along!
The title of this film as well as about 95% of its runtime suggest that this is merely a time loop occurring inside the already-enigmatic Bermuda Triangle. But a haunting final ten minutes reveals that the still-living Jess, who was shoved off the ship by her past self, is actually in a far larger time loop. However, moments before it’s set to restart, she has a vague conversation with a taxi driver who seems to know more than he lets on and who asks her to “come back.” Could he be an otherworldly entity trying to help her voluntarily exit the loop?
Even more suggestive, the cruise ship is named for the brother of Sisyphus, a character from Greek mythology doomed to spend eternity repeatedly trying to push a boulder up a hill, only to always have to start over down at the bottom. Put these together and you find the suggestion that the time loop is actually a bizarre purgatory where Jess is repeatedly working out her guilt over the death of her autistic son, but unable to ever expiate those feelings. Not only is she in a world that’s not real, but she can’t bring herself to leave it.