Triangle

This is a great movie. And it’s not. And it acknowledges that in a humbly brilliant way no one can foresee. The real cherry on top is that within the first half an hour, there’s barely enough pull to make you keep watching beyond the template of a tried-and-true Bermuda Triangle warp zone clichéd formula. It’s a 21st century haphazardly hashed together remake of a slightly above average twilight zone episode. Timecrimes, an indisputably entertaining watch contemporaneously released in Spain, takes on nearly identical material with a far more coherent plot structure and a far more concretely fleshed-out focus. There are zero indications that it’s going to be anything other than a mediocre b-horror movie. It’s ugly as hell in the desaturated landscape that dominated easy color correction ten years ago. The writing screams quick and lazy editing to turn a profit. That’s precisely the beauty of it all. Instead, it ends up utilizing its shortcomings in a flawless application of acknowledging its obvious setup and average writing as a tool to question and castigate the viewer for making the assumptions it knew they would make.  Twist after twist after twist, Triangle guides you down the rabbit hole in a way that can only be described as psychologically abrasive. Just like everything we that’s been done before, we descend into an increasingly convoluted time loop. Unlike what we’ve known, this one’s much more unabashedly sadistic on a metaphysical level. With a surreal and dream-like quality, the latter viewing experience feels like floating. It’s deeply engaging, it’s wholly unique in its take on temporal experimentation, and perhaps most shockingly; it’s demanding of the viewer.  The juxtaposition of Triangle’s familiar and blasé elements amongst its jarringly visceral approach are a triumph. It reminds us that clichés are so deeply entrenched in our capacity to consume media that setting them up directly alongside unexpected imagery is an unforgettable and uncomfortable force. Much like our heroine, we’re obligated by the film to psychologically confront all the versions of ourselves we’ve created in our assumptions and assimilations. In hindsight, is that not the point of science fiction?