Watching the mind-bending horror film Triangle for the first time will lead to many psychological forks in the road. It's not the kind of film that can be walked away from without dissecting it and double thinking every bit of the film. In fact, upon finishing, viewers might realize that everything they thought they figured out about it is wrong.
There's no mistake in the title of this film. The title Triangle refers to the infamous Bermuda Triangle, which is known for being the ocean center of unexplained disappearances and bizarre activities. This triangle’s points are made up of the island of Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Miami, where the film takes place. Upon its initial theatrical release, this film tanked, probably due to bad marketing. On its surface, the film is simply about a woman trapped aboard a boat where freaky things start happening. But so twisted are the details that it’s worth a second viewing for the interpretation and multi-layered details alone.
The film follows Jess, a single mother to an autistic son. It’s clear Jess needs a break from parenting. She joins some friends for what should be a fun day of sailing off the coast of Miami. Soon after setting sail, the ship is ravaged by a surprise storm and the group must hop onto another large ship called The Aeolus, which seems to be empty. Right away, as the group explores the ship, Jess senses she has been here before. Warning that there are spoilers ahead!
Before the group can figure out why the ship seems to be empty they realize they are being hunted and killed. The culprit is a lone, masked individual and the only other sign of life on the ship. After watching her friends die one by one, Jess manages to corner the killer and throw them overboard. Once she does, she notices an overturned boat with passengers in distress approaching the ship. She realizes it is their boat from earlier, and the passengers are herself and her friends.
That’s right; this movie is all about time loops. Jess is now watching everything that has already happened occur again, this time from an outside perspective. This time Jess figures out who the killer is, and when the mask comes off she finds out that it’s another version of her. This is when it’s clear this isn’t a run-of-the-mill horror film. This is when the film takes a sharp left turn.
Jess loops through the same events on the ship, each time experiencing what it’s like to kill her friends and uncovering what has happened in time loops before hers. With each new loop, she becomes more desperate to find her way out of the loop and back to her son, who is waiting for her at home.
Eventually, this version of Jess manages to throw herself overboard. She wakes up on a beach, dazed, and walks back to her home where she sees her son through a window. She then sees yet another version of herself come in and begin to berate and physically abuse him. It’s clear that this is a side of Jess the audience had not been privy to, but that is very real.
Original Jess kills this new Jess and grabs her son, puts him in the car, and begins to drive. She is driving distracted when they are hit head-on by a semi-truck, killing her son instantly. Jess watches from nearby as witnesses approach the scene and a man dressed in all black pulls up in a car next to her. He then drives a forlorn Jess to the dock where she originally set sail with her friends at the beginning of the film. Her friends are all there and each detail that she has seen before begins again.
Christopher Smith, the director, purposely left the meaning and end of the film open for interpretation, so there are few solid answers available. Upon first viewing, the audience can determine that Jess is clearly in some kind of cyclic state of punishment due to her horrible behavior while she was alive. Upon a second viewing, there are a lot of details that can be examined closer and bring new meaning and horrors to the film.
One theory can lean on the name of the ship, The Aeolus. Aeolus is a Greek figure who was father to Sisyphus, known for his eternal fate of rolling a boulder up a hill only to reach the top and realize he must do it again and again. Sisyphus was also known for cheating death on multiple occasions. Similarly, Jess works her way through each time loop thinking she has somehow cheated death and will be the one person aboard to escape. Her selfish nature shines when she realizes the only way to start a new time loop is to kill all of her friends. It becomes clear she will do whatever it takes to exit the time loop, no matter whom it affects.
There are also the seagull scenes to consider. Right before the fatal car crash, a seagull comes crashing into Jess’ front windshield, scaring her son. Jess pulls over, picks up the seagull, and tosses it in a spot where there is already a pile of dead gulls, presumably from the time loops before. In Greek mythology, seers could predict the future by reading omens in the flight and songs of birds.
At the beginning of the film, the camera lingers on a seagull that sits on the sail of the boat Jess and her friends started on. Seagulls are mostly spotted around seaports of arrival and are often a sign of hope because it means a traveler is close to home. In this case, the seagull can be interpreted as an omen of the horrific fate that waits for Jess.
She is home, but her home is now an eternal loop of witnessing her own terrible acts. The seagull that hits her car also serves as the other bookend to this, signifying to Jess that, no, reaching the “end” of the loop doesn’t mean she has escaped anything. This is home now and there is no hope.
The man in black who shows up at the car accident can easily symbolize Charon, a Greek figure who ferried dead souls into the underworld realm of Hades. He’s in all black, the color of death, and does indeed ferry Jess right back to the beginning of her loop, her version of the underworld. It can be argued that this loop of punishment is not death, but purgatory. Again, the director left this open to interpretation.
There is also the use of triangles in the film, which has become a staple in horror films. Spiritually, some believe the triangle shape holds the secrets of ascending to another realm after death, an eternity of some kind. On a primal level, triangles have sharp edges that create a sense of unease. Jess’ journey through the Bermuda Triangle while also facing her sharpest, ugliest truths is right in line with the movie’s intent to blanket its audience in layered symbolism.
It would be easy to watch Triangle once and call it a story bout a boat trip gone wrong. It isn’t until a second viewing that its true story of punishment, guilt, and justice becomes clearer in this mystical, psychological thriller.