The puzzle film Triangle (2009) is a mystical thriller, a complex psychological drama, as well as a shock to the soul and an explosion of the brain. The audience is divided into those who are delighted and those who do not understand. However, many of those who are delighted also do not understand.
Is what happens in the film an endless time loop or hallucinations of a mentally ill protagonist? Probably, such explanations also have the right to exist. But still, the true meaning of the “Triangle” is far from obvious, encrypted by the creators, so it takes time and attention to understand.
What is the movie “Triangle” about?
At the very beginning of the film, Jess appears. She calms the autistic son Tommy, because he is tormented by nightmares. Dressed, Jess is going somewhere to go. For some reason, she has a desire to wipe off the paint from the floor, and she stains her clothes. Suddenly, someone starts ringing at the door, but it turns out that no one is there. Jess throws things into a bag and leaves in his car for the harbor.
The ideological component of the film is not new. As stated above, it all starts with Jess, a single mother, about to spend the weekend on the Triangle. Greg invites her for a walk. She met him in a cafe. The main characters Greg and Jess were played by Michael Dorman and Melissa George. The company is small: in addition to Jess and Greg, the group includes four more people. After the strongest storm has approached, Greg receives an SOS signal: an excited female voice reports that everyone has died.
The yacht capsizes. When everything calms down, everyone except Heather is on the capsized boat. It would seem that there is no chance of salvation. However, the Aeolus liner suddenly appears on the horizon, on board of which the characters see passengers. Unfortunate travelers rise to the deck, but no one is found there. Jess feels that deja vu is happening to her (as if she had already been on this liner). She even looks for a bunch of her own keys there, but it is not known how they got there. Friends hope that Heather is already on the ship, although everyone knows that she is dead.
Soon, something strange happens on board. Friends have to split up for reasons of more effective search for people. But they are being chased by a masked killer who kills everyone but Jess. The woman confronts the unknown maniac and eventually throws him overboard.
Falling into the water, the killer informs her that when she gets on board, she will have to kill everyone. This is the only way to return home. As soon as the masked killer disappears into the depths of the sea, Jess hears cries for help and is very surprised when she realizes that she and her friends are drifting on an overturned yacht.
“Triangle” plot explained
Some scenes from the film are deeply symbolic and require close attention. In addition to leaving a strong impression, these episodes also contain hints and hints that will help to understand the hidden meaning of the plot.
Storm survivors
The company on Greg’s yacht gets into a terrible storm, during which one of the guests – Heather – is washed overboard. But the question is: did the five survivors survive or die? The time on Jess’s clock and on the ship is the same – it’s 8:17 – the time of the car accident and the death of his son, while for Greg and others, the time stopped at 11:30 – the moment of the storm. It seems that only the missing Heather survived, as she is absent from the vicious circle of ongoing horrors.
The main character of the film is Jess. Everyone else is pulled into the heroine’s endless time loop, a kind of impossible Penrose staircase. Greg and company are just extras because their actions don’t matter.
Liner “Aeolus” – a ghost ship
The name of the ship “Aeolus” – Aeolus, the formidable lord of the winds from ancient Greek mythology. Sisyphus, the son of Eol, once tried to deceive Death, for which he was severely punished: he was doomed to hard eternal work that did not bring results.
The heroine is punished in this way, she is doomed hundreds and thousands of times to repeat futile attempts to change something. Why was there such a severe punishment?
Is an accident the beginning?
Toward the end of the movie, the viewer sees the scene of the accident. At the same time, the feeling does not leave the feeling that it is the car accident in which the heroine’s son, autistic Tommy, who dies, is precisely the key starting point. Jess also dies in this accident, time stops at 8.17 for her. Everything that happens in the future is her personal circles of hell.
Not just a driver
Jess, who died after the accident, looks from the side at her dead son. The approached taxi driver says that the boy can no longer be saved and offers to give her a lift.
In the context of the allegorical plot, the driver is Charon, a mythological character transporting the souls of the dead to the eternal kingdom of the dead. Arriving at the port, Jess gets out of the car. The taxi driver says that he will leave the meter on. He is waiting.
“You’ll be back, right?”
– Yes I promise.
Breaking a promise leads the heroine to a situation almost the same as that of the long-suffering ancient Greek Sisyphus. From now on, everything that Jess does will be only Sisyphean labor: useless, difficult, causing despair.
Why Triangle
“Triangle” is the name of Greg’s yacht, on which the heroes of the film set off on their ill-fated tragic voyage. However, in addition to this, a number of hidden associations with the symbol of the triangle arise.
- Aeolus ship. Aeolus is the name of three characters in ancient Greek myths at once, often mixed up. Initially it was the same way. An absolute hit: the main character on the liner is one in three persons, and her actions are threefold.
- The Karpman triangle is a psychological model of interaction between people: the successive roles of the unfortunate victim, the good rescuer, the evil persecutor. At first, Jess the victim simply does not understand what is happening, then she unsuccessfully tries to save her doomed friends, and finally, she herself becomes a ruthless killer.
- The three most powerful scenes from the film in terms of perception, giving an understanding of the meaning of infinity: a mountain of medallions, identical corpses, hundreds of dead birds. How many times has this nightmare been repeated?
Plot Explanation: Time Loops
The movie “Triangle” begins with Jess comforting his autistic son Tommy, who is tormented by a nightmare. She is dressed and ready to go somewhere. She scrapes paint off the floor, soils her dress. She hears the doorbell ring, but no one is there. She packs her bag, jumps into the car and drives off to the harbor.
Here’s what I’m going to do to help explain the convoluted plot of the movie Triangle:
Group numbering
A group of people who go sailing: Jess (main character), Victor (bachelor), Downey and Sally (married couple), Greg (boat owner), Heather (she is not important to the plot). I’m going to divide them into groups to help understand what the hell is going on.
I will number them group-3. Jess 3, Victor 3, Downey 3, Sally 3 and Greg 3… well, of course, Heather 3. They set sail and get caught in a storm. Greg-3 receives a distress call from a woman in a panic. He loses the signal, the boat capsizes and they are stranded.
Heather-3 is washed into the ocean and after that leaves the site (see, I told you that she is dead, gone and will not return, poor thing). There is a reason why I start with number 3 and we will get to it after a while.
Liner
On an overturned boat, group 3 sits helplessly waiting for someone to come to rescue them. And a massive liner comes to their aid. They see someone on deck and board the ship.
There seems to be no one on the liner, and the group begins to look for someone on board. Jess-3 feels that she has deja vu and that she has already been on this ship. Jess-3 finds her keys, but no one knows how they got there. They suspect that Heather is already on the ship (no, she’s still dead).
Victor’s death
Finding no one on board, everyone meets in the dining room. Jess-3 sees someone running away and informs the group. Victor-3 is running after this unknown. Greg-3 and Jess-3 move on looking for someone from 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 theater” written in blood on the mirror. Jess-3 is worried about the blood and wants to get off the ship, but Greg-3 is about to go to the theater and they part ways. Jess-3 goes to the dining room, there is no one there, Victor-3 comes covered in blood. Victor-3 attacks Jess-3, but in the process, Jess-3 finds a wound on the back of Victor-3’s head, aggravates it, and kills him.
Everyone dies except Jess, end of cycle
Jess-3 hears the shot, she follows him into the theater. Greg-3 lies dead. Downey-3 and Sally-3 blame Jess-3 for this. Greg-3 tells them before dying that Jess-? shot him (later we find out who this Jess is). From above, the masked man shoots and kills Downey 3 and Sally 3. Jess-3 flees and is chased by a masked man.
Jess-3 defeats the masked man, who mumbles something before falling off the ship. Jess-3 is the only survivor. She then hears the group screaming from overboard. Jess-3 sees her entire group waving from an overturned boat, even herself. Jess-3 is the “someone” now witnessed by Group-4 on the ship. Which also means that Team-3 saw Jess-2 as “someone” on the ship.
So the number 3 for the group that started is only there to help keep count. But there were many such groups that were on the ship and were dying. We don’t know how many, but maybe a couple dozen.
Triangle: new loop
I will now refer to this as Group-4 (Jess-4, Victor-4, Downey-4, Sally-4 and Greg-4). Jess-3 runs after group-4 in bewilderment. At the same time, Jess-3 drops the keys. Jess-4 takes the keys, saying they are hers (just like Jess-3 did). Jess-3 notices Jess-4 and runs away. Now Jess-4 informs group-4 that “someone” is running away. Victor-4 runs after Jess-3.
How Victor actually gets hurt in the triangle
Victor-4 catches up with Jess-3. Jess-3 tries to explain what just happened. Apparently Victor 4 doesn’t understand and thinks she’s crazy. By mistake, Jess-3 pushes Victor-4 back onto a sharp ledge that pierces his head.
Jess-3 goes crazy and runs away. She finds a room with shotguns and notes on the floor that say, “Kill anyone who sits down.” All letters are written by previous versions of Jess. Jess-3’s medallion is removed from her neck, only to fall on a pile of replicas, medallions that belonged to earlier versions of Jess.
She takes a gun and goes to rescue people from group-4. First, Jess-3 intercepts the meeting between Jess-4 and Victor-4. This helps prevent Jess-4 from aggravating Victor-4’s wound and killing him. Jess-3 doesn’t kill Jess-4, Jess-4 runs away.
Jess turns out to be a mysterious masked shooter
Jess-3 runs to the theater and rescues Downey-4 and Sally-4. However, Greg-4 is dead. Jess-3 shoots the masked shooter from above and inflicts a head wound. Downey 4, Sally 4 and Jess 3 flee, but Jess 3 is momentarily separated from the two of them.
At this time, it turns out that the masked shooter with a wound in the flesh is Jess, this is Jess-2. Who then is Jess-1? Jess-1 is a masked attacker who shoots Downey-3 and Sally-3. Note that Jess-1 does not have a head wound and never takes off her mask. Jess-3 causes Jess-1 to fall off the ship. So, in this loop story, there will be three Jesses 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 stabs Downey-4 and fatally stabs Sally-4, who flees. Jess-3 notices Sally-4 and runs after her to help. Sally 4 finds the control room and tries to send a distress signal.
This signal is similar to the one Greg-3 is shown receiving at the beginning of the movie “Triangle”. Sully-4’s signal now picks up off-screen Greg-5, who hasn’t been caught in the storm yet. Sully-4 runs to the upper levels towards an area with a whole bunch of dead Sullys.
Like many medallions and notes, many Sallys have already died. Jess-3 then sees Jess-2 being hacked to death by Jess-4. Summary: Jess-2 is the shooter with the headshot, and Jess-4 is the one Jess-3 spares while trying to save Victor-4. The fight between Jess-2 and Jess-4 (even) is different from the fight between Jess-1 and Jess-3 (odd). Such is the nature of loops. An even Jess behaves in one way, and an odd Jess in another.
Jess understands the nature of endless loops
Sally-4 bleeds to death, Jess-3 and Jess-4 are alive, watching as a new group of themselves approach the liner. This is group 5. Team-5 sees Jess-4 as “someone” on board. Jess-3 realizes that this will continue until everyone, including herself, is killed and no one enters the liner. She desperately wants to return to her son. Jess-3 now goes ahead and removes all the bodies.
These are all actions that Jess-1 would have done. Jess-3 removes Downey-4’s body and writes “Go to the theater” with his 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, even Jess events are different from odd Jess events.
Jess falls off the ship
Jess-3 goes to the dining room and tells Downey-5 and Sally-5 to go to the theatre. Jess-3 pulls out a gun, puts on a mask, follows Greg-5 into the theater and shoots him. Greg-5 learns that the shooter is 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 flees and Jess-3 (the masked man) gives chase. The same fight occurs between Jess-3 and Jess-5 (which we previously saw between Jess-1 and Jess-3). Jess-5 takes over, Jess-3 mutters “kill everyone” and falls off the ship.
Summary: Even and Odd Jess
This marks the end of the liner episode. Here I would like to point out that there are two event loops:
ODD: Where Jess never sees the face of Jess from the past. Odd-Jess always ends up seeing the future Jess’ face. The past Jess she meets and fights has a mask. Odd-Jess will 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, Odd-Jess is never hacked to death; she just falls off the ship.
EVENs: Where Jess sees Jess’ face from the past. Even-Jess always intercepts her past in the dining area. Even-Jess sees Jess’ past face. However, even-Jess gets shot in the head when he tries to shoot. Finally, Even-Jess is always hacked to death and thrown overboard.
After The Liner: Explaining the beginning of the movie “Triangle”
The story continues after Jess-3 falls alive from the ship. She is washed ashore and returns home. From the outside, she sees the events of the morning in her house. This means that she returned to an earlier point in time. Jess-3 sees her morning self screaming and insulting her son. Tommy sees Jess-3 outside the window and makes him splash paint.
Morning Jess yells at Tommy and starts removing color and soiling her dress (just like in the first scene). Jess-3 rings the doorbell and hides. Morning Jess hears the doorbell ring, but no one is there (now you know who rang that bell). Jess-3 sneaks up behind Morning Jess and hits her with a hammer.
Tommy sees this. Jess-3 holds Tommy and tells him that he just had a nightmare (it’s the nightmare in the first scene). She puts the dead Jess in a bag and packs her up with her other clothes (so there was a dead body in the bag in the first scene).
She loads the car and leaves. On the way, she hits a seagull. She stops to get rid of a dead seagull and notices a whole bunch of dead seagulls. It only means that other Jesses (weird survivors of the ship) did the same.
The nightmare loop is still going on. The seagulls are shown to be connected to the liner in some way. Hence, like everything on the ship, they keep piling up (e.g. a few medallions, a few notes, a few dead Sallys).
Jess-3 returns to the car and starts moving. Distracted by Tommy, she crashes into a truck and the car goes down. This kills Tommy. The body of the dead morning Jess lies. However, Jess-3 is unharmed and stands watching the crash. The taxi driver offers a ride, and she heads for the harbor. As she enters the harbor, she meets Victor, Greg, Downey, Sally and Heather. They are just getting ready to leave. The loop has started all over and they’re heading out.
This explains why Jess-3 has déjà vu in the liner. The shock of her son’s death makes her imagine that her son is in school, and she came on a sea voyage without him. Her fault is not that she left him at school, but that she led to his death.
Triangle movie ending explained: the reason for the loop
“Triangle” hidden meaning
The film is amazing, although not easy at all. The modern interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus – no doubt. But not only. A tense, intricate plot evokes strong emotions, the desire to understand the secret meaning makes you watch the film more than once.
A psychological drama film raises questions in an attentive viewer. Why does the heroine constantly strive to return to the yacht and again launch an endless plot with a known outcome, because it is impossible to bring her son back to life? Where does this senseless persistence come from? Is it possible to leave the closed triangle, what needs to be done for this?
Jess was not an exemplary mother, she often broke down and offended her son, for which she was gnawed by an enduring sense of guilt. Hence her desire to escape from the ship, return to her son, correct the situation. And if nothing can be corrected, then at least be next to your child again, see and hug again. Even if only for a short time. Tommy’s son is her world.
My world is waiting outside the school for my mother to pick it up. And don’t talk about my world anymore.
The way out seems to be that in order to stop the recurring madness, Jess needs to let go of the situation. When the heroine realizes that with her perseverance she only repeatedly repeats the suffering and death of her son, she will reconcile herself and return to the driver who is waiting. After all, the counter is not turned off.
“Triangle” ending explained
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.
