Triangle

Triangle is a brutal slasher, schizophrenic twisted psychological flick and sad human drama all at once. Thanks to its focused, detail-oriented direction and grade-A performances, this film works very well as a genre crossover, as well as delicious horror for an audience with a brain who never got over their disappointment from Ghost Ship. Why didn’t this engaging, interesting and visually attractive flick get a theatrical release in the US? (01/14/2011)

A similar game with time as Timecrimes (no, this is not a spoiler, the film makes that clear very early, and even that four minute trailer doesn’t hide everything), with a similar setting as Death Ship and a climax as arguable as A Perfect Getaway. It’s certainly worth the attention, though, Christopher Smith improves with every film (even though I already liked Metro) and there were several moments that even made me consider five stars (during the first act). In the end, it’s not that great, but it left me with an overall positive feeling, though I will need at least another viewing to make sure this film makes sense… There were several times that made me feel a similarly bleak “psycho” atmosphere as the X-Files episode Dead Calm. (11/23/2009)

Christopher Smith is an interesting spider. He's clearly comfortable below the level of twenty million dollars per film, which allows him to do pretty much whatever he wants in movies, yet he’s ambitious enough to be envy of three quarters of current overseas filmmakers. Triangle somehow didn't particularly grab me the entire time, and impressed me at most with its very skillfully shot and uncompromising action. Among other things, the shotgun hunting of the heroes reminded me very much of the French film Martyrs. Except that then the film gets stuck in a loop just like the main character and everything happens all over again, and mostly in exactly the same way, which doesn't do much for the attention span. However Smith keeps trying to make the violence a bonding element between the viewer and the film. In the end, to be sure, the ending did get me nicely. Especially with its aggressiveness against the main character (I actually jumped at the mirror scene), the functional idea, and the depressing fatalism. Similar here to, for example, Black Death. Sure, towards the end it becomes clear how useless the whole ship actually is, but I'm still very curious how it will turn out when someone hands Smith a proper budget. (06/25/2012)