Triangle

Just to start the confusion, these two are the same people.

Triangle is a 2009 British-Australian psychological horror film directed by Christopher Smith (who also directed Creep and Severance).

The story revolves around Jess (Melissa George), one of the passengers of a yachting trip in the Atlantic Ocean who, when struck by mysterious weather conditions, jump to another ship only to get stuck in either a Groundhog Day Loop, Stable Time Loop, Alternate Timeline, Bad Future or "Close Enough" Timeline.

Yeah... it's pretty confusing... Naturally, Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory occurs.

Not to be confused with the 2007 Hong Kong film of the same title.

Tropes used in Triangle include:

• Abusive Parents: Jess, as it turns out (both physically and verbally), although she really does love Tommy and it seems that the abuse comes from stress and frustration, rather than deliberately harming him for the sake of it.
• Alpha Bitch: Sally, to an extent.
• Alternate Timeline: The first time the first Jess meets the second Jess ignoring the Killer Jess before a new timeline has been created where the other passengers died differently. Subverted in that the two timelines play off at the same time and each influence each other. For example the new timeline eventually causes the second Jess to have her own story, which we don't see, where she eventually killed some of the passengers as the second masked killer which eventually made the first Jess turn into the first masked killer.
• Apologetic Attacker: "Mean Jess" from the second loop, after she's finished repeatedly stabbing Downey. "I'm sorry, but I love my son."
• Asshole Victim: Arguably Sally, due to her bitchy and disdainful attitude towards Jess (even going so far as to snottily refer to Jess' son as a "retard").
• Ax Crazy / Broken Bird: "Mean" Jess from the second loop. We don't get to see her full story, but Word of God believes her to be a Jess who has gone through the loop so many times she's become callous and psychotic.
• Bolivian Army Ending
• Break the Cutie: Jess.
• Break the Haughty: Sally.
• California Doubling: Well, Australia Doubling, at least. It is set in America, but was filmed in various locations throughout Australia.
• Cassandra Truth: Greg doesn't believe Jess when she claims that she's sure she's been on the boat before, trying to tell her that it's all in her head.
• Fake American: All of the main actors (and a few of the ones playing minor parts) are Australian.
  • Also the ship itself. According to it's life preservers, it is registered in Miami, but it is clearly modeled after the British pre-war steamer RMS Queen Elizabeth, and even betrays its origins by using the Commonwealthian spelling of "Armoury" instead of the American "Armory".
• Fate Worse Than Death: Jess is stuck in a presumably endless time loop (or purgatory, depending on your interpretation) in which she murders her friends and accidentally kills her son over and over again.
• Final Girl: Jess... sort of.
• Future Me Scares Me: Jess threw the masked killer overboard which she later finds out is herself.
• Futureshadowing: Pretty much everywhere.
• Grandfather Paradox: Jess kills the Jess in the end and takes her identity which caused her to trigger a car accident killing her son which makes her lose her memory and go to the harbor again.
• The Grim Reaper / Archangel Gabriel / Manipulative Bastard / Alternative Character Interpretation: The taxi driver, due to Epileptic Trees. Christopher Smith himself has even suggested The Grim Reaper theory.
• Groundhog Day Loop: Jess witnesses the death of her co-passengers from different views because apparently the whole situation starts all over again when they die. Subverted because for everyone she has killed apparently the corpses stay.
  • Except sometimes they survive for a bit longer, only to die in other ways, in other places, and sometimes their bodies stay... or don't.
• Here We Go Again
• I Hate Past Me: Future Killer Jess, having gotten tossed off the boat, finds herself at the beginning of the day and sees herself physically abusing and yelling at her kid. Hating what she used to be, and having long since jumped off the slippery slope she smashes her past self's head in and tries to take her place. Somehow this does not result in erasing herself from time, but sets up an infinite loop.
• I Thought It Meant: It's not a film about the Bermuda Triangle, despite what the title and part of the premise may lead some to believe. However, Word of God states that one of the early ideas was for it to be a Bermuda Triangle film, and, although that idea was scrapped, some of the mythology surrounding the Triangle did make its way into the plot.
• Idiot Ball: Phelous claims this is the only reason Jess can't break the Stable Time Loop.
• Infant Immortality: Averted.
• Ironic Hell: Everything mean Jess has tried to do to get back to her son (killing her friends being one of them) has led to her being directly responsible for his death, starting the sequence all over again.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Jess.
• The Killer in Me
• Made of Plasticine: In the midst of trying to convince Victor that they keep dying and coming back to start everything all over again, Jess accidentally kills him by pushing him into one of the pointed hangers attached to the wall, completely penetrating the back of his head.
• Mama Bear: To save her son Jess is willing to kill her best friend and everyone else on the yacht. And when she comes across a third Jess mistreating him she murders her.
• Meaningful Name: The name of the ship, Aeolus, refers to a mythological Greek figure whose son, Sisyphus, was doomed by the gods to roll a boulder uphill for all eternity, where each time he reaches the summit the rock rolls over him and then back down again.
• Mind Screw: You're gonna need multiple viewings to actually get everything, and even then you'll either be confused, thinking there's gonna be a sequel or that a sequel is impossible.
• Narnia Time: Subverted. Jess ends up back home where her son is still painting. but she's actually still stuck in the time loop.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Averted. Jess throws the masked killer overboard, threatens the second Jess which created a second timeline, gets motivated by the second Jess who turned into the second masked killer to become the first masked killer and gets thrown overboard by the third Jess which will apparently walk the exact same path she did.
  • Jess discovered a grate in one of the ship's rooms through which she could see a whole pile of the locket she wears which indicates that there are presumably several if not many other Jesses that went through the loop, but she never meets them. Then her locket falls in with the rest...
• Perpetual Frowner: Jess. She very, very rarely smiles, and when she does, it seems to be forced rather than a genuine smile.
• Plot Hole / Leave the Plot Threads Hanging: The second Jess got a totally different story which may or may not have influenced the first Jess to become the masked killer of her own story which can either be a Plot Hole for the sake of the story or Leave the Plot Threads Hanging for a sequel.
  • Many of the loop's elements have no logical beginning, in a sort of My Own Grandpa situation.
• Reset Button: Killing the other passengers is a reset button. Only it isn't a reset button.
• Rule of Symbolism: The "Mean Jess" (as she was nicknamed by the director) from the second loop (the killer who was a lot more callous and brutal than the other Jesses) has a bullet skim the top of her head, causing blood to run down it. Later, the "past" version of Jess who is seen abusing her son has blood running down her face in the exact same pattern, from the exact same spot.
• Scenery Porn
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: This is what Jess tries to do but only created another timeline which we don't see completely in the movie.
• Shout-Out: The killer wearing a sack as a mask is a Shout-Out to Friday the 13 th Part II, in which Jason Voorhees wears a pillow case over his head prior to the iconic hockey mask.
• Slashed Throat: Downey, in the second time loop. This doesn't kill him straight away, and he ends up being stabbed repeatedly by Jess. He lives long enough to attempt to scrawl the name of his killer in his own blood, but dies partway through.
• Stable Time Loop: Jess comes to the harbor looking dazed and eventually ended up being on the mysterious boat and threw a masked killer overboard. She realizes the Groundhog Day Loop and tries to break the chain by killing herself becoming the masked killer and getting thrown overboard. She drifted back to the shore where she was able to hitchhike back home seeing herself with her son. She killed her other self and wanted to dispose of the body which resulted in a car accident killing her son. She gets on a taxi to go to the harbor and the trauma seems to have caused amnesia. She comes to the harbor looking dazed and eventually ended up being on the mysterious boat, etc. etc. etc.
  • The trauma didn't cause amnesia. Jess gets on the boat at the end with the intent of killing everyone to reset the loop, then going back to fix things surrounding the incident with her son. The Jess that gets on the boat at the end is the Jess that is involved in the first loop which we don't get to see all of (when she was wearing the black jacket and went ape shit on the guy in the cabin). The time split didn't happen when she killed herself on the boat, it happened when she killed herself in the house.
  • Word of God states that one of the possible interpretations of the film is that amnesia was involved... starting when Jess wakes up from her nightmare looking bewildered, almost as if she doesn't know why she's there.
• Too Dumb to Live: Phelous constantly bemoans the lack of common sense that plagues the cast throughout the movie. Like why the other Jess keeps fulfilling the time loop by keeping herself hidden and spying on herself rather than just reveal herself to the pre-time cast and stop the entire mess from happening, or why Greg assumes the people in the boat are hiding from them for fun rather than just letting them know their presence.
  • To be fair to Greg, he is very rational-minded, and was just trying to find a somewhat sane explanation for why the ship appears to be deserted.
  • Phelous also points out how Jess seems to just insanely conclude the loop is murder based, despite the same amount of time occuring in each iteration and the fact that there are multiple Jess' in each loop, so why does she think killing herself will reset the loop?
  • What do you do when you see a message saying 'Go to the theatre' written on a mirror in blood?
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Jess and Greg.
• Villain Protagonist: From one point of view, anyway.
• The Walrus Was Paul: Christopher Smith has stated that the movie is supposed to be ambiguous to let people interpret the movie in different ways.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Heather after their ship capsized? Other than the surviving suspecting she survived, got on the cruise, and dropped her keys (which was done by Jess by the way), we never know whether she survived, died, or became part of the time anomaly.
• Who Wears Short Shorts?: Jess does.