Explanation Of The Plot & Ending Of The Movie. Triangle is one of those films that came out without a noisy hype. I don’t remember the buzz about this film in 2009, before it was released. It’s oddly not well rated on IMDB. The film has well executed time loops and a solid discourse on the nature of those loops. The main character goes on a boat trip with her friends. During the trip, they get into a storm, and after that everything turns upside down. In this video, I will try to do a detailed analysis of the plot and ending of the 2009 Triangle movie.
In the first shots of the film “Triangle” we see Jess. She comforts her autistic son, Tommy, who is suffering from nightmares. Jess gets dressed and gets ready to go somewhere. While removing paint from the floor, she stains her dress. Suddenly there is a knock at the door, but no one is there. The woman packs her bag, gets into the car and leaves for the harbor.
Group numbering
Our focus is a group of people involved in sailing. Among them we see Jess (the main character), Victor (a lonely guy), Downey and Sally (a married couple), Greg (the owner of the boat) and Heather (her role is the least significant. To understand what is happening, we will need to divide all the heroes into groups.
I will give this group number 3: Jess-3, Victor-3, Downey-3, Sally-3 and Greg-3, Heather-3. They are sailing on a sailboat and get caught in a storm. Greg-3 receives a distress signal from a panicking woman, but he loses the signal. His boat capsizes and they are all stranded. Heather 3 disappears into the ocean (see, I told you that her role is insignificant, she is dead). I started numbering from number 3 for a reason, and we’ll come back to that in a while.
Liner
Team 3 sits helplessly on an overturned boat, waiting to be rescued. A huge liner sails to their aid. The heroes see someone on deck and board the ship, but no one seems to be there. The group begins searching for anyone on board. Jess-3 feels that she has deja vu and she has already been on this ship. Jess-3 finds his own keys there, but no one knows how they got there. The group suspects that Heather is already on the ship, even though everyone knows she is dead.
Victor’s death in “Triangle”
No one can find anyone on board the ship. After the search, everyone meets in the dining room. Jess 3 sees someone running away in the distance and informs the group. Victor 3 runs after an unknown person. Greg 3 and Jess 3 continue to search for people on the ship. They ask Downey 3 and Sally 3 to wait in the cafeteria. Greg-3 and Jess-3 find a room with “Go to the theatre” written in blood on the mirror. Jess-3 is worried about the blood and wants to wash it off, but Greg-3 is about to go to the theater. They break up. Jess-3 goes to the dining room, but no one is there. A bloodied Victor 3 appears. He attacks Jess-3. During the struggle, Jess-3 discovers a wound on the back of Victor-3’s head and kills him.
Everyone is dying. End of cycle
Jess-3 hears a gunshot in the direction of the theater and follows the sound. Greg-3 lies dead. Downey 3 and Sally 3 appear. They blame Jess-3 for his death. Greg-3 manages to say Sally’s name before dying. Was it she who shot him? From above, the masked man shoots and kills Downey-3 and Sally-3. Jess-3 manages to escape, but the masked man pursues her. Jess-3 overpowers the masked man. Before he falls overboard, he mumbles something. Jess-3 is the only survivor. She then hears her group screaming from the side of the ship. Jess-3 sees his entire group waving from the side of the overturned boat. Among the waving is even she herself. Jess-3 sees group-4 near the overturned boat. It becomes clear that Group-3, when they saw “someone” on the ship, saw Jess-2 and the members of Group-2.
This should make it clear to you why the starter group was given the number 3. This is only to accurately count the number of such groups that were on the ship and died. But the only thing I can say is that there were many such bands. Perhaps a couple dozen.
“Triangle”: a new loop
A new loop begins. I will now refer to the people on the overturned boat as Group 4 (Jess-4, Victor-4, Downey-4, Sally-4 and Greg-4). Jess-3 runs in disbelief after group-4. While chasing, Jess-3 drops her keys. Jess-4 holds up the keys, saying it’s hers (same as Jess-3). Jess-3 becomes noticed by Jess-4 and rushes towards her. Now Jess-4 informs group-4 that “someone” is running away. Victor-4 runs after Jess-3.
How Victor actually gets hurt
Victor-4 catches up with Jess-3. She tries to explain to him what just happened. Victor-4 does not understand anything from her explanations and thinks that she is crazy. Jess-3 accidentally pushes Victor-4 and Victor-4 falls on a ledge and crushes his head. Jess-3 is worried about this and runs away. She finds a room with weapons and notes on the floor. One phrase is written on them: “Kill everyone who sits down.” All letters are written by previous versions of Jess. Jess-3’s medallion falls from her neck, only to land on a bunch of replicas, medallions that belonged to earlier versions of Jess. She takes the gun and goes to rescue the people from Group 4. First, Jess-3 intercepts the meeting between Jess-4 and Victor-4. This helps stop Jess-4 from killing Victor-4 by head-butting the ledge again. Jess-3 doesn’t kill Jess-4. Jess-4 runs away.
Jess. The mysterious shooter in the mask.
Jess-3 runs to the theater and rescues Downey-4 and Sally-4. Greg-4 is dead. Jess-3 shoots the disguised shooter and inflicts a head wound. Downey 4, Sully 4 and Jess 3 run after him, but Jess 3 is momentarily behind them.
At this time, it becomes clear that the masked shooter with a wound on his body is Jess-2. Who then is Jess-1? This is the mysterious masked shooter for Downey 3 and Sally 3. Note that Jess-1 is not injured and she never takes off her mask. Jess-3 causes Jess-1 to fall overboard. So there are three Jesses in this loop story at any given time.
Jess kills everyone again
Jess-2 tricks Downey-4 and Sally-4 into following her into a room with a bloodied mirror. Jess-2 kills Downey-4 with a knife and fatally stabs Sully-4. Jess-3 notices Sally-4 and runs after her to help. Sally 4 finds the control room and tries to send out a distress call. This signal is the same one that Greg-3 heard at the beginning of the movie “Triangle”. Sully-4’s signal is now received by Greg-5. This happens behind the scenes, because he has not yet been caught in a storm. Sully-4 runs to the upper levels to a place where a whole bunch of dead Sullys have already gathered. Here we see many medallions and notes. Afterwards, Jess-3 sees Jess-2 being wounded to death by Jess-4. Recall that Jess-2 is the shooter with a head wound, and Jess-4 is the one Jess-3 spares while trying to save Victor-4.
The fight between Jess-2 and Jess-4 (even lines of the heroine) is different from the fight between Jess-1 and Jess-3 (odd lines of the heroine). The nature of loops is to blame for this. Even Jesses behave one way, and odd Jesses behave differently.
Jess begins to understand the nature of loops
Sally-4 dies from bleeding. Jess-3 and Jess-4 are alive. They watch as the new group-5, in which they see themselves, approaches the liner. Team-5 sees Jess-4 and identifies her as “someone” on board. Jess-3 realizes that this will continue until everyone, including herself, is killed and no one boards the liner. She is desperate to get back to her son. Jess-3 now leads the way and cleanses all bodies. These actions should have been done by Jess-1. Jess-3 removes Downey-4’s body and writes “I’m going to the theater” in blood on the mirror. Jess-3 sees Jess-4 hit Victor-5 in the head. Victor-5’s conversation with Jess-4 is also very different from Victor-4’s conversation with Jess-3. Again, the actions of the even Jess are different from those of the odd copy.
Jess falls overboard
Jess-3 goes to the dining room and sends Downey-5 and Sally-5 to go to the theater. Jess-3 then pulls out a gun, puts on a mask, and follows Greg-5 to the theater. She shoots him. Greg-5 recognizes the shooter as Jess. Below we see Downey-5 and Sally-5 blaming Jess-5 for Greg-5’s death. Jess-3 shoots and kills Downey-5 and Sully-5 (just like Jess-1 kills Downey-3 and Sully-3). Jess-5 runs off and Jess-3 (the masked man) chases after her. The same battle takes place between Jess-3 and Jess-5 (as we saw earlier between Jess-1 and Jess-3). Jess-5 takes over, and Jess-3 mutters “kill everyone” and falls overboard.
Even and Odd Jess
Let’s summarize the end of each episode on the liner. I would like to note that there are two event loops:
Odd: Where the next Jess never sees the face of the previous Jess. Odd Jess always ends up seeing future Jess’ face. The past Jess she meets and fights is wearing a mask. Odd Jess, never see the face of the past Jess. Also, Odd Jess is never intercepted by the past Jess and hence ends up fighting Victor in the dining room and killing him. Finally, the odd Jess is never killed. She just falls off the ship.Even: Jess sees the face of the past Jess. Even Jess is always intercepted by her last line in the dining room. Even Jess sees Jess’ face in the past. However, even Jess keeps getting shot in her head when she tries to shoot. Finally, even Jess is always shot to death and thrown overboard.
After the liner The beginning of the movie “Triangle”
The story continues as Jess-3 falls off the ship alive. She ends up on the beach and returns home. Outside near the house, she sees the events of the morning in her house. This means that she returned to an earlier point in time. Jess-3 sees how she herself screams and scolds her son. Tommy sees Jess-3 outside the window and spills paint in fright.
Jess is in the house yelling at Tommy and starts cleaning up the spilled paint. She accidentally stains her dress with paint (just like in the first scene). Jess-3 rings the doorbell and hides.
Jess hears the doorbell ring, but no one is there (now you know who rang the bell). Jess-3 sneaks up behind Jess and hits her with a hammer.
Tommy sees everything that is happening. Jess-3 holds Tommy and says that he just had a nightmare. She puts the dead Jess in a bag and changes her clothes into different clothes (so in the first scene there was a dead body in the bag). Jess-3 puts the bag in the car and drives off. On the way, she knocks down a seagull. She stops to get rid of a dead seagull and notices a whole bunch of dead seagulls. This means that other Jesses (those who survive on the liner) did the same things. The cycle of nightmare is still going on. The seagulls are shown to have something to do with the idea of the film. Hence, like everything else on the ship, they keep piling up (e.g. a few medallions, a few notes, a few dead Sallys).
Jess-3 gets into the car and continues driving. Distracted by Tommy, she crashes into a truck. The car falls. This kills Tommy. However, Jess-3 was unharmed. She stands watching the accident. The guy in the taxi offers to give her a lift and she heads for the harbor. There she meets Victor, Greg, Downey, Sally and Heather. They are preparing to sail on a sailboat. The cycle began all over again, they swam.
This explains why Jess-3 gets déjà vu. Shocked by her son’s death, she imagines that Tommy is at school. And she, at that time, went on a voyage without him. Her fault is not that she abandoned her son at school, but that her actions led to his death.
The end of the movie “Triangle”: the reason is in the loops
Try to remember the conversation about Eola. This is the name of the liner. Sisyphus son of Eol breaks the promise he makes before death. As a result, he is punished for it. He is forced to roll a huge boulder uphill, only to watch it roll down. He is forced to repeat this action forever. The same goes for the doorbell.
In a similar vein, Jess promises the taxi driver that he’ll be back. She says, “I promise.” Like Eol, Jess also breaks his promise. She goes to the harbor and decides to set sail. This analogy also means that Jess is dead and her soul refuses to cross the ferry (taxi).
When does she actually die in the movie?
The original version of the accident is never shown in the Triangle movie. As a character, Jess is annoyed by her son. Perhaps she did not carefully follow the road, got distracted and crashed the car. A dead Jess and a dead Tommy are seen at the scene. This is what may have happened the first time. Jess in shorts stands off to the side watching the accident, but she is actually dead. She is picked up by a taxi driver who is surprisingly calm. He is calm even after seeing the accident and the two Jesses. Also, the time on her watch matches the clock on the ship, possibly the time of her death, 8:17.
All loop events are analogous to “rolling a huge boulder uphill”. Thus, we can safely assume that the events of the cycle occur after death. We need to find the starting point of the cycle. The harbor seems like a logical starting point for the loop, as it happens right after the taxi driver breaks the promise, (death). Every time she breaks her promise, a new cycle of punishment begins. This will only end if Jess accepts her death and realizes that her son died because of her annoyance.
