Triangle

Director: Christopher Smith
Starring: Melissa George, Michael Dorman and Liam Hemsworth
Distributor: Icon Films
Runtime: 99 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011

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Rating notes: strong violence

If a director wants to make a suspense thriller aboard a yacht and then an empty luxury liner, Triangle is quite a good way to do it. This is an Australian production with UK and Irish money, filmed on the Gold Coast. The Australian cast impersonate Americans in Florida – to ensure some American box-office.

The cast is small, spending the first half of the film on a yacht on a sunny Saturday afternoon sea pleasure cruise. Then comes a storm (quite effective) which overturns the yacht. When a liner moves in sight, they are relieved and go on board. Since this is a scary thriller, you know that there are going to be frights and deaths (gory, but not exaggerated).

The problem was that after 40 minutes, most of the characters were dead. How could it go on for another hour? It does – and best not to give hints about what happens except that before the deaths, the heroine, Jess (Melissa George) has shuddering impressions of deja vu on the boat. Then the action moves quite rapidly with twists and turns.

The film could have ended several times with reasonable explanations of what has happened and fans of the genre will have probably worked out something plausible. But, the ending tricks us with another plausible explanation – which is a satisfying conclusion to a small budget but effective tease and scare thriller.