History Film / Triangle

* IHatePastMe: [[spoiler:Future Killer Jess, having gotten tossed off the boat, finds herself at the beginning of the day and sees herself [[AbusiveParents physically abusing]] and yelling at her kid. Hating what she used to be, and having long since had her share of JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope, she [[DropTheHammer smashes her past self's head in]] and tries to take her place. Somehow this does not result in erasing herself from time, but sets up an [[HereWeGoAgain infinite loop]].]]

%%* BreakTheCutie: Jess.
%%* BreakTheHaughty: Sally.

* DropTheHammer: [[spoiler:Jess smashing the original Jess' head in with a hammer.]]

* AntiVillain: [[spoiler: Jess kills all her friends, but she did it in order to stop the time loop from happening.]]
* ApologeticAttacker: [[spoiler: "Mean Jess" from the second loop, after she's finished repeatedly stabbing Downey. "I'm sorry, but I love my son".]]

** [[spoiler: Jess herself. At least, the ''original'' Jess, who was physically and verbally abusive towards her autistic son, and was killed by the 'Time Loop Jess' whom we follow through the movie]].
** [[spoiler: 'Mean Jess', who brutally stabbed Downey and Sally, ends up getting beaten to death by ''yet'' another Jess (presumably an earlier iteration of herself)]].

** Greg doesn't believe Jess when she claims that she's sure she's been on the boat before, trying to tell her that it's all in her head. [[spoiler: Unless the entire movie takes place in Jess' head, of course.]]

* CynicismCatalyst: The car crash that kills [[spoiler:Jess's son]] marks her StartOfDarkness.

* DropTheHammer: [[spoiler:Jess smashing the original Jess's head in with a hammer.]]

* ExtremelyShortTimespan: The story plays out within one day. [[spoiler: Or so it seems; the exact nature of time loop is unclear.]]

** The mirror shot showing [[spoiler: three reflections of Jess at once.]]

** The record player on the ship, playing the broken record, mirroring a timeloop. Moreover, [[spoiler: Jess moves the needle backward on the record rather than forward, perpetuating the loop instead of moving beyond it.]]

** Somebody ringing the door bell at Jess's, which later turns out to be [[spoiler:her future self]].

* GhostShip: The Aeolus is deserted, its crew and passengers apparently long gone. The ship actually dates to TheThirties and there is a photo of it dating to 1932. An interesting spin on the trope is that there seems to be [[spoiler: no evil presence - or any presence at all, for that matter - on the ship apart from the characters we're already following (these might appear in unexpected different versions though). The ship itself is subtly implied to be sentient but its role in the events is basically limited to providing a fitting background for the plot to unfold - [[RuleOfSymbolism a symbolic one, too.]]]]

* TheKillerInMe: Remarkable how the film blends together Amnesiac and Secretive varieties of this trope. [[spoiler: When Jess boards the Triangle, she knows she is gonna kill the other crew members at some point and [[IDidWhatIHadToDo actually intends to do it]]. Soon after, however, she suffers from LaserGuidedAmnesia and forgets all about her intentions - only to gradually come again to the conclusion that she ''will'' need to kill them, all while her other version (which may or may not have gone through an AmnesiaLoop of her own) is already doing just that. Upon killing everybody and then going through some other things, she eventually boards the Triangle ''[[StableTimeLoop again]]'', again intending to kill the crew - only to then again forget all about it, etc., etc.]] [[MindScrew Yes, it's that confusing.]]

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Happens unintentionally. By virtue of the car crash, the corpse in the trunk turns from murder victim into casualty. [[spoiler: An equally plausible reading is that Jess actually died in that car crash, and the "surviving Jess" is really her disembodied soul in the hell/purgatory where the entire movie takes place.]]

* OnceMoreWithClarity: The opening scene shows several brief snippets of Jess's morning. [[spoiler: We see this scene again toward the end of the film, and it becomes clear that the parts that were skipped over were Jess verbally and physically abusing her son - as well as that the snippets actually refer to two different versions of Jess and not to one and the same one throughout.]]

* PoorCommunicationKills: Part of it is due to the perfectly understandable case of CassandraTruth, but still Jess never tries to fully explain or even ''demonstrate'' to her friends that there's a GroundhogDayLoop and that's why there's multiple Jess's running around. As a result, they're not sure if she's trying to help them or save them a couple of times and they think she's got some sort of split personality or is at the very least, crazy (which may be true, but for different reasons) and thus refuse to listen to her when she's trying to help them. Her plans as to her friends undergo [[TheKillerInMe a radical change after a couple of loops though]].

* ProtagonistJourneyToVillain: Jess's journey from DamselInDistress to WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds. [[spoiler: Only the journey seems to have actually first happened a good many loops before the beginning of the movie...]]

* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: This is what Jess tries to do, [[spoiler: but she only creates another timeline which we don't see completely in the movie. More generally, in the end it turns out that this is what kept, keeps and will keep the plot as a whole in motion to begin with.]]

* SoleSurvivor: [[spoiler:Heather]] in [[http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1c85x2/triangle_this_is_the_mindfuck_film_you_missed_out/ this]] interpretation. The interpretation being [[spoiler: the whole group is actually dead and only Heather survived the accident on sea.]]
* SpoilerCover: One of the most widespread posters [[spoiler:subtly hints Jess is the masked killer by simply putting a mirror image in a poodle of blood. By itself it affects nothing, but quickly turns into a massive suggestion during the movie]]. But absolutely nothing beats one of the posters used on leaflets that consists of [[spoiler: exhausted and bloodied Sally sitting right next to entire pile of mutilated Sallies, some of them already decomposing, with word "Triangle" written at the bottom]].

* TemporalSuicide: The movie involves [[spoiler: various versions of Jess killing the other versions]].

* TheWalrusWasPaul: [[WordOfGod Christopher Smith has stated]] that the movie is supposed to be ambiguous to let people interpret the movie in different ways.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Victor spends entire film barefoot, even before they leave for their cruise.

* AmbiguouslyGay: Greg seems to be viewed this way by Downey: "You are living on a boat with an 18-year-old boy and you are asking me not to bring girls." He later also inquires if Greg and Victor sunbathe together. He seems to be implying that the two are involved.

* ApologeticAttacker: [[spoiler: "Mean Jess" from the second loop, after she's finished repeatedly stabbing Downey. "I'm sorry, but I love my son."]]

* ArcWords: Jess says "I didn't do this." whenever something her alternate versions do, going hand-in-hand with PoorCommunicationKills. Given the lesson of the movie, it's probably to show that [[NeverMyFault she refuses to accept responsibility/the fact that]] [[spoiler:she killed her son and it can't be undone.]]

* ImplausibleCorneredEscape: Happens when Sally is chased by "Mean" Jess across the GhostShip. At one point the camera is focused on Sally leaning against a wall, panting. Then the camera pans around to show Jess arriving at the same location a few seconds later. The camera pans back to where Sally was standing seconds ago... but she's gone.

* ImpendingDoomPOV: Some shots on board of the Aeolus are done this way, presenting the POV of Jess secretly observing the other passengers.

Not to be confused with the 2007 Hong Kong film or the 1981 British soap opera [[NamesTheSame of the same title]].