Locked in the Triangle (2009): What Really Happened To The Heroine Of The Film? The Meaning Of Triangle: Explanation Of The Plot & Ending.
Country: UK, Australia
Genre: fantasy, thriller
Year of production: 2009
Directed by: Christopher Smith
Actors: Melissa George, Liam, Hemsworth, Michael Dorman, Henry Nixon, Rachael Carpani
Triangle is a 2009 film with an intricate plot that invites the viewer to find the hidden meaning on their own. The heroes of the film “Triangle” are pulled into a time loop, so they are forced to live their life and death over and over again. The ending of this puzzle movie was left behind the scenes. However, everything is simple here, and there is a reasonable explanation for everything. To make it clearer, let’s do a little analysis of the film.
What is the movie about
The idea of the film is not new. It all starts with the fact that single mother Jess is going to spend the weekend on the Triangle yacht. Greg invites her for a walk, whom she met in a cafe. The company is selected small: in addition to Jess and Greg, four more people. During the trip, the guys fall into a calm and see an impending storm. Greg receives a distress signal: an excited female voice says that everyone is dead.
The main characters Greg and Jess were played by Michael Dorman and Melissa George. Frame from the film.
The yacht is caught in a storm and capsizes. When everything calms down, everyone is on the capsized boat, except for Heather, who was washed overboard during a storm. There is no chance of salvation. However, the passenger liner Aeolus suddenly appears on the horizon, on board of which unfortunate travelers rise. The ship is sailing on the ocean, and our heroes do not find any of the people on board.
Soon strange things begin to happen here. The guys split up to find people. They are being hunted by a masked killer who kills everyone but Jess. The girl fights with an unknown maniac, and eventually throws him overboard. Falling into the water, the killer informs her that when the guys get on board, she will have to kill everyone. This is the only way to return home. As soon as the body is hidden in the depths of the sea, Jess hears cries for help, and is surprised to see himself and his friends drifting on an overturned yacht.
Plot transcript
From the audience, the meaning of the film “Triangle” escapes because everything is revealed closer to the finale, which, in fact, is the beginning of this confusing story. The end of the story – Jess breaks out of the time loop on the ship, and returns home to his son, with the firm intention of changing everything.
Here she sees that the other Jess, who got here earlier, is rude to the child, believing that her autistic son ruined her life. The heroine kills her second “I” and hides the body in the trunk of a car. She decides to take the boy away, but gets distracted on the way and the car gets into an accident.
The girl stands on the road and sees her son dead, as well as the body of herself, which fell out at the time of the collision. A random taxi driver says that the boy can no longer be saved, and offers to give her a ride. Jess agrees, arrives at the port, from where she set off on a fateful journey. Of course, such an explanation does not give much, but if you pay attention to the clues that periodically appear in the film, the meaning becomes clear. Let’s consider everything in more detail.
Frame from the film.
Storm
This is one of those symbols that the heroine sees in her life. Before the trip, her son was painting a storm, and accidentally spilled the paint. Irritated Jess, who is positioned as the second “I” in the story, slaps the child in the face. Therefore, according to the director’s intention, the storm can be seen as a bad omen. It is quite possible that, having become angry with her son, the mother lost control.
In the finale, “good Jess” kills “evil Jess”, trying to protect her son. She understands that the child is not to blame for anything, so she tries to suppress a bad beginning in herself.
car accident
The accident becomes a point of transition to another world. On the ship, the clock shows the time 8:17. This is the moment of the crash. The fact that the clock is standing and the numbers match indicates that Jess’ time has stopped. It was she who died in an accident, going with her son to a party with friends. Her body lies on the pavement in a dress stained with blue paint, and her soul watches everything from the sidelines, no longer able to change anything.
Here you can pay attention to the boy scout musician. The boy’s drum has the same symbols as the musical instrument on the ship.
Liner
It is difficult to imagine what kind of meaning the director put into this ship, but in the simplest explanation, the liner resembles purgatory. It is here that the soul of Jess must undergo purification and repent of the sins committed.
Frame from the film.
However, she does not even admit to herself that she mistreated her son. Even after her death, the girl continues to claim that Tommy is at school and she needs to pick him up. However, the phrase slips here that the child for her is the world that awaits her. However, until she fully realizes this, Jess will continue to get on the ship, kill her friends, move home only to return to this hellish vicious circle again. This has happened more than once: the bodies of the dead, which do not disappear anywhere, notes, medallions, dead seagulls on the shore.
Driver
He appears at the end of the film “Triangle”. Most of all, the taxi driver looks like Charon, the carrier of the souls of the dead across the River Styx. Only here the director transferred Greek mythology to modern realities, introducing a passenger liner instead of a boat into history.
However, the essence of this does not change. At the beginning of the film, we are not shown exactly how Jess got to the port. She already appears on the pier, tired and exhausted. However, the film’s ending explains that she got here by taxi. At the same time, having reached the place, the driver says that he will not turn off the meter, and asks: “After all, you will return?” Jess replies in the affirmative and goes to the yacht to start another cycle of this time loop.
It is noteworthy, but Charon can transport even living people to the realm of the dead if they have a golden branch with them. However, he never returns anyone from the afterlife.
The meaning of the ending
After all the Easter eggs left by the director, the finale and the meaning of the film “Triangle” are fully revealed. All the events that take place in the real world are shown until the moment when the car with Jess and his son disappears around the corner at the beginning of the film. The following moments are the afterlife wanderings of the soul of the main character.
All the characters shown in the film, she saw in reality:
- The cabin number on the ship is the number of her house in life;
- The symbols on the drum in the wardroom are the symbols on the boy’s instrument from the scene of the accident;
- Storm – son’s drawing;
- The toy yacht in the pool is the Triangle that Greg invited her to.
All other characters, with the exception of Greg, were already born in her agonizing brain. For example, Victor symbolizes her son, if he did not suffer from autism. Downey and Sally – she herself with any conditional guy if she got married. Heather is the same Jess if she didn’t have a son.
Therefore, the end of the story directly indicates that any mistakes made in this world will have to be paid for in the next. That is why Jess finds herself in this time trap and is forced to kill her other incarnations in order to return to her son.
However, even having achieved this, she understands that nothing can be changed, and the apparent salvation turns out to be just another round of her personal hell. The meaning of the ending of the film “Triangle” is very deep, but it can only be fully understood by re-watching.
Frame from the film.
The meaning of the name
There are two key names here. The first is the Triangle yacht itself. The title contains three psychological incarnations of the heroine herself: the victim, the savior, the killer. Once on the liner, Jess becomes a victim hunted by an unknown killer. Then she tries to save her friends in order to break the vicious circle. And finally, she herself becomes a killer, who cracks down on everyone in order to get home. At each of the peaks of this triangle, the soul of Jess undergoes another transformation, however, the geometric figure itself is closed, which indicates the infinity of the cycle.
The second is the name of the liner Aeolus. This is a direct reference to Sisyphus, the son of Eol, who decided to deceive the very ruler of the kingdom of the dead – Hades. As punishment, the deceiver is forced to roll a huge stone up the mountain, which, having barely reached the top, rolls down. This is exactly what happens to Jess, who is forced to start her journey from the beginning an infinite number of times.
Her salvation is to repent of her sins and realize that it was she who caused the death of her son, whom she previously caused only pain and suffering, avenging her life that did not work out. Perhaps only complete and sincere repentance will allow the soul to break out of this vicious circle. After all, the taxi driver did not turn off the meter, and he can take her to another place, which is called Paradise.
