Triangle

Movie Grade: C+

DVD Features Grade: C-

Overall Grade: C

I was in the mood for a typical ‘pretty people partying with a killer on the loose’ type of movie when I realized it was time to review Triangle. From the description it seemed to fit the bill. So I popped in the ‘ol Bluray and discovered that there definitely were some pretty people in peril, but this was in no way a typical horror film.

The story begins with Jess (Melissa George) joining some new friends for a day of sailing after having a particularly rough morning with her autistic son Tommy (Joshua McIvor). She is unsettled from the moment she boards the yacht for reasons that no one can pin down. The ship encounters some very strange, violent weather and capsizes. The group has no choice but to board an old ocean liner that just happens to be passing by after the storm only to discover that it is completely deserted. To make matters worse, someone on board starts killing them one by one.

I know what you’re thinking because it’s exactly what I thought. They just have to find the killer and stop him. Some of them will survive and some of them won’t. But keep in mind they’re in the Bermuda Triangle so nothing is as it seems; including the supposed predictability of the plot.

The thing that makes this movie worth watching is the twists and turns that the plot makes so I’m not going to go into any details about that. I will say that I was incredibly frustrated for at least half of the film because there are obvious solutions to the problem that the lead character doesn’t take because if she did it would mean the end of the story. I can suspend my disbelief only to a certain point when the situation becomes completely implausible is when I begin to give up on things. Fortunately, every time I felt like I couldn’t stand the stupidity any longer a new twist was thrown in to divert my attention away from it. It’s like the moment when you know they shouldn’t split up in a horror movie, or when you know she shouldn’t be going into that dark alley alone… you want to scream at them through the screen… that happens a lot in Triangle!

All that being said, no one plays slightly catatonic and terrified better than Melissa George. She nailed it in the remake of the classic film The Amityville Horror and she once again epitomizes it here in Triangle. A movie where her character is constantly being mind-fucked seems to be her forte. I don’t know what it is about her but she definitely fits that genre very well. Her characters are always the step above the silly screaming girls who always end up dead. She plays the smarter, more self aware

girl who you assume is going to make it out alive. Turistas, 30 Days of Night and the aforementioned The Amityville Horror are just a few of her memorable turns in this genre.

Unfortunately, her largely unknown supporting cast doesn’t do much more than play nameless soon-to-be-cadavers. Two possible exceptions are Michael Dorman, recently seen in this years Daybreakers, who does a good job as her pseudo love interest and Captain of the ship, Greg and Liam Hemsworth (younger brother to Star Trek hottie Chris Hemsworth) who makes some waves as the eye candy, hunky deck hand Victor. But this is without a doubt Melissa George‘s movie.

The special features on the disc include some previews for movies that I’m sure you won’t want to see like Nicolas Cage‘s Bad Lieutenant and so forth and some interviews with the cast and crew. The interviews are incredibly poorly edited together. I seriously could have done a better job cutting it together on Windows Movie Maker, so I have no idea what they were thinking. But I guess bad interviews are better than no interviews I suppose.

So while I wasn’t blown away by this film and was frankly annoyed during a lot of it I will give it a lot of credit for trying to be something different; something that definitely isn’t easy to do and seeing it through to the end. They also had a couple of twists in there that I didn’t see coming which always impresses me. And again, I think the cast did the best they could with the material given and I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing more of Michael Dorman and Liam Hemsworth in the near future. And as for Melissa George my only piece of advice would be try to play something a little less tortured next time! I wanna see her smile already!

Movie Grade: C+

DVD Features Grade: C-

Overall Grade: C