Triangle

Triangle (2009) begins with a yacht capsizing. The survivors climb onto an empty ocean liner and realise someone aboard is trying to kill them. Then the film becomes something else entirely: the same events start again, and the heroine watches her own repetition from outside it. Christopher Smith does not hide his sources. He has cited The Twilight Zone, the moment in Back to the Future where Marty watches himself from a distance, Dead of Night and Memento. The Sisyphus myth is stated outright in the script and the ship is named Aeolus. Smith says the real subject is regret, and being unable to undo something you have done. It is set off Miami but was shot in Queensland, in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast. Commercially it was a disaster: a 12 million dollar budget against roughly 1.3 to 1.6 million worldwide. It found its audience years later, on home video and through argument online. It runs 99 minutes. Good for: time loop puzzles, structures that ask to be solved, and stories that change on a second viewing. Less good for: it is not frightening if you came for horror. It stays emotionally cold, and its own rules are not consistent to the end; some gaps are left for the viewer to fill.