When a group of friends head out onto the high seas in a little yacht, ready and waiting to be overpowered by the eventual storm clouds, you know from the outset things aren’t going to end well. As you’d expect, young mum Jess (George) even had her fair share of bad feelings before they touched off from their local harbour, but assured by her friend Victor (Hemsworth) they’ll be just fine, even if they encounter a few storm clouds, the group head off for the day. How wrong he was.
Confronted with freak weather conditions, their boat soon falls foul, meaning ominous as it looks, the shipwrecked must board a passing old liner, or fear never finding rescue. Getting creepier by the minute, the group of friends struggle to find anyone actually manning the ship and sure enough comes under attack from a mysterious character who poses a seemingly impossible dilemma for how to get off the liner alive.
While the story struggles a little in the second the third acts, Triangle is a back in the right direction for writer/director Christopher Smith after bland and lazy genre film Severence. Taking two years to pen the script, you can tell Smith has some big ideas for his films, and though they don’t all come off in Triangle, it bodes well for him in the future. In fact, it’s the rounded and well thought out conclusion to Triangle that really ends the film with a lot of imagination and purpose.
Though some of the scenes in the ships hallways are packed with genuine tension and draw viewers down the normal path, Triangle is not the basic horror film you might have been expecting. To give anything away would spoil some of the big twists but let it be known there’s another dimension to the story you won’t see coming.
With the film so wholly centred on Jess, to meet its potential it requires a performance of real conviction from star Melissa George but sadly she doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull it off. Plying her trade with boundless energy and a decent attempt at intensity, she does enough to get by though with a little more budget set aside for a bigger lead actress, Triangle might have breached the next echelon of silver screen status
Echoing the tone of a wicked childhood nightmare, Triangle is still worth 99 minutes of your time and suggests big things are back on the horizon for Christopher Smith, even if he hasn’t quite hit a home run just yet.
★★★★★