An In-Depth Look at Christopher Smith's Triangle (& What the Twist Means)

When Triangle came out in 2009, it didn't make much of a mark on the box office. But with the popularity of the show Severance, fans are digging into director Christopher Smith's back catalog. And what they're discovering is a film that leaves them with more questions than answers. If you're uncomfortable with ambiguity, this is probably not the film for you, because Smith has ambiguity baked into every scene. But if you love weirdness and solving puzzles and mysteries? Buckle up and come along for the ride! Warning: spoilers ahead.

What's the twist in Triangle?

Movie expert Lexi Amoriello says the film follows a woman named Jess who is stuck in a time loop after someone kills her and her son. By the end, we learn that Jess is an abusive parent and is responsible for her son’s death. The loop is her punishment for her actions and guilt.^{[1]
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Lexi Amoriello
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Section 1 of 7:

The Director's Explanation

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Christopher Smith offers 3 possible interpretations of the film. The director of the film was adamant that all of the ambiguity in the film is intentional. He didn't want to have a defining twist that might please some people but disappoint others. In an interview with indieLondon the year the film came out, he provided 3 equally legitimate understandings of the film:^{[2]
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- The Bermuda Triangle: It's a weird Bermuda Triangle story. All of the timey-wimey weirdness can be attributed to the supernatural reputation of the Bermuda Triangle.
- Insanity: Jess is suffering from a mental illness, such as schizophrenia (which is also alluded to in the movie), or she's having a nervous breakdown. She's dissociating and may also be hallucinating.
- Coma: Jess was in a car accident and didn't die, but is in a coma. Her damaged brain is trying to make sense of what happened and where her son is. All of the loops are dreams in her head as it tries to process the trauma.
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Smith encourages fans to think about and analyze the film. There are so many symbols and themes to choose from in the movie that it can become like a treasure hunt as you pick it apart. In one online interview, Smith noted that he was going for the kind of intellectually satisfied feeling you get when you're still thinking about a movie days after the fact.^{[3]
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Research source} He has also indicated that he's delighted to hear new fan theories.^{[4]
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- It's important to keep in mind that even though you can consider the 3 interpretations above "canon," in the sense that they were all intended by the director, the director has also made clear that none of them are definitive, nor are they the only possible interpretations.
- Smith has also left many questions open to interpretation and without any true or intended answer, such as why Jess even had to deal with this loop situation in the first place, when did the loop start, and what really happened to Tommy.

Section 2 of 7:

The Twist at the End of Triangle

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The end of the movie reveals the source of the main time loop. When the driver appears, both Jess and you realize that he's not "normal." He can see Jess, but it's likely that the other bystanders can't see either of them. The driver takes Jess to the harbor as she requested, securing her promise that she'll return. It's her violation of that promise that sets the main time loop, the death loop, in motion.
- If Jess chooses to keep her promise to the driver and return to the taxi, she will die (or perhaps awake from a coma), and all of the time loops will cease to exist.
- By choosing to go sailing with Greg, Jess is returning to the Aeolus loop. When she breaks the Aeolus loop, she ends up back in the death loop.
- The film leaves it as an open question whether Jess is deliberately choosing to return to the loop. Jess briefly falls asleep in the taxi, which means she could have forgotten everything that happened before (and there's nothing that follows after to suggest otherwise). This open question is important for a lot of the interpretations of the film.

Section 3 of 7:

Major Themes in Triangle

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Triangle deals with heavy themes of trauma, punishment, and fate. The very nature of a time loop suggests that very little is actually in your control as an individual. When you couple that reality with feelings of guilt and shame, the whole cycle becomes an earned punishment for the trauma Jess put her son through.^{[5]
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Lexi Amoriello
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Expert Interview} Here are some other themes you can follow through the movie:
- Memory: Jess's memories become more unreliable the more cycles she passes through the time loop, calling reality into question
- Time: The existence of a time loop challenges the notion that time is linear
- Motherhood: Jess always sees her duty as to her son and feels guilty for doing something for herself
- Fate: Jess's inability to stop specific time loop events from happening suggests humans have less free will than they think
- Trauma: Jess's experiences in the time loop are a manifestation of the trauma her brain experienced during the accident

Section 4 of 7:

Triangle In-Depth Plot Analysis

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A single mother rushes her son out the door. Jess, a single mother, seems to dash about in and out of the house throughout the opening credits of the film. She seems to be everywhere at once, gathering laundry, cleaning some spilled paint. She hears a knock at the door and stands, inadvertently wiping paint on her dress. When she answers the door, no one's there.
- Back inside, Jess stuffs the paint-stained dress in a duffle bag and zips it up. She's wearing different clothes, leaving it open for you to assume that she simply changed clothes off-camera.
- Outside at the clothesline, she notices seagulls flying overhead and a sailboat overturned in a wading pool before going inside to get her son.
- On the fridge inside, Jess looks at a sticky note with the name "Greg" along with the words "The Triangle," "Harbor," and the time "8:30." There doesn't seem to be any recognition. In the next scene, she's loading up the trunk.
- Pay attention to the camera angles in these opening scenes. When you see Tommy painting through the window, for example, you're looking through Jess's eyes. Notice how she really does seem to be everywhere at once.
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Jess joins Greg and his other friends on The Triangle. Jess's car is shown driving down the road, then you're transported to Greg's boat on the harbor. When Jess arrives, she seems really off but says she's just tired. She seems a little confused about everyone's questions and gives mysterious responses. She meets the rest of Greg's friends, and they all sail off together. Jess soon drifts off to sleep. The sailing party consists of:
- Greg: skipper of The Triangle and regular customer of Jess's at the diner where she works
- Sally: friend of Greg's who he briefly dated in 8th grade
- Downey: Sally's husband, also a childhood friend of Greg's
- Heather: a friend of Sally's who Sally wants to set Greg up with
- Jess: a single mother with an autistic son who works at a diner and has been invited to go sailing by one of her customers. You don't realize this at this point in the movie, but this Jess is not the Jess from the start of the film, the one who spilled blue paint on her dress.
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Jess awakens on the shore. In the next scene, Jess opens her eyes to see water and sits up to realize that she's been washed up on the shore. But then she blinks again and she's on a bed in Greg's boat, The Triangle. Victor, who had previously said he didn't think Jess was okay, tells Greg that when he asked her where her little boy was, she said she couldn't remember.
- Sally judges Jess pretty harshly and reveals that she has some rather close-minded views about people with disabilities. Her friend Heather tries to get her to empathize, but Sally is convinced that Jess is just after Greg's money. But keep in mind that Jess never sees this conversation take place.
- Greg tells Jess that he came into the diner where she works the day before to invite her to go sailing with him. She doesn't remember.
- Jess seems tired and disoriented, but that makes sense given she's just woken up from a nap. She's trying to make sense of where she is and what's going on around her.
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A weird storm comes up and capsizes The Triangle. As the storm approaches, Greg radios to the Coast Guard. They pick up another call on the line, a woman saying that someone is killing everyone on board. The storm overtakes the boat, and Victor has to cut the sail. Water floods into the hull, and the wind captures the mast, tossing the ship upside down. The storm disappeared as quickly as it came up. Heather doesn't surface, but everyone scrambles aboard the upturned boat.
- Jess seems concerned and in shock afterward (who wouldn't be). Greg presumably assumes she's thinking about her son and mentions the fact that he's at school, and says he'll be alright until they get back.
- Although you don't know it at the time, the boat is the only location in the movie where there is only one Jess present.
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The group boards the Aeolus. As the ship approaches their capsized boat, they see a hooded or cloaked figure on board, but it seems empty when they climb on. Jess feels extreme dejà vû as she and Greg explore the ship and she argues with Greg about it. Downey and Victor talk about the ship, noting it was built in 1932, and discuss the mythology related to its namesake.
- It's revealed that the ship was named for Aeolus, who in Greek mythology was the father of Sisyphus, a demigod who was punished for cheating death.
- Victor asks what time it is. Greg says 11:30, but Jess notices that her watch has stopped at 8:17. They eat food in the ballroom, then see someone and chase after them.
- Greg opens the door of Room 237 to reveal "Go to theater" written in what appears to be blood on the mirror.
- Looking out from the deck, the capsized boat never moves—almost as if it's tethered to the Aeolus.
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The group convenes in the theater. On her way, Jess walks through the dining room and sees that the food they had been eating, seemingly moments before, is now rotten. Victor, covered in blood, tries to kill Jess. She kills him instead, realizing that he has a puncture wound in his skull. When she gets to the theater, the other 3 are there. Greg has been shot and claims that Jess shot him. Then shots ring out, and the hooded figure pokes over the ledge of a balcony.
- Pay attention to the vantage points you are shown by the camera as the group moves about the ship. Remember that the camera is typically showing you the scene through Jess's eyes.
- You might also notice that it's not clear how Sally and Downey know that they're supposed to go to the theater. This is perhaps the first moment in the movie that you start to realize perhaps Jess really is in two (or more) places at once.
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Jess confronts the hooded figure. Jess chases after the hooded figure, and they fight over several decks of the ship. Eventually, they end up on the deck. Jess asks the hooded figure who they are, but can't understand what they say until she hears them say, "It's the only way to get home. You have to kill them." Then Jess knocks the figure overboard.
- The figure in the hood was a time loop version of Jess. She has returned to the time loop. She has always been in the time loop. But this Jess doesn't realize she is in the time loop.
- Jess is replaying the events in her head, struggling to process and make sense of it all. Everything feels so intensely familiar—the truth seems so close she can taste it.
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Jess becomes hooded Jess. Back inside the ship, Jess sees an old record player. She picks up the needle and starts playing "Anchors Aweigh." It seems significant. She hears a commotion outside, and when she goes back to the deck, she sees herself and her friends on the capsized boat, calling for help. Looking down, she becomes the hooded figure that she had looked up at from the capsized boat (and that new Jess is now looking up at). The same basic events and conversations repeat, just as when she boarded the ship, with the new copies.
- Jess now understands that she's in a time loop. She sees the notes on the floor that she's tried to leave for future cycles of herself, telling her to kill everyone on board. Despite seeing all of these notes, she writes another one. She can't stop herself from doing this.
- The locket gives you another glimpse of the power of the loop. Her locket nearly falls down a grate, but she grabs it just in time. She sighs as she sees the piles of lockets that had fallen below, only for her locket to slip through her fingers and also fall.
- These small incidents let Jess (and you) know that there are certain events in the loop that Jess cannot change, no matter what she does.
- Jess also tries to let new Victor in on the secret of the time loop. He doesn't believe her, and they get into a bit of a confrontation about it. Jess pushes new Victor up against a wall, not seeing the spike that would impale new Victor in the skull. Recall that when Victor tried to attack Jess, he had a puncture wound in his skull that she was able to use to get away from him.
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Jess confronts new Jess in the ballroom. Despite telling herself over and over that it's not really her, she can't pull the trigger. New Jess runs off. Jess is now convinced that they can escape the time loop trap simply by changing the pattern. Because she confronted new Jess in the ballroom, new Jess wasn't attacked by new Victor. She believes she has changed the pattern and enabled their escape.
- At the same time, Jess realizes she still has to kill everyone on the ship. She just can't let the new people get on board. She entices new Downey and new Sally to Room 237, saying she knows how to escape, but once there, she stabs them. So now you know where the blood came from to paint the message on the mirror.
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Jess promises Sally she'll return. New Sally manages to escape with Jess in pursuit. Jess chases her into a corner of the deck where there are piles of dead Sallys in various stages of decay. Jess realizes this has happened many times before and is starting to feel a little guilty about putting all of these people through all of this. She wraps her sweater around new Sally to stanch the bleeding from her wounds and promises her she'll return.
- Notice that all of the other Sallys have identical sweaters wrapped around them. This is another time loop event that Jess can't change.
- When new Sally dies and Jess hears another round of shouting, she realizes that the cycle repeats when everyone else is dead.
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Multiple Jesses are revealed. Because Jess is on one of the upper decks with Sally, she can't get down to the lower deck before the group from the capsized boat boards the ship again. She looks down and sees 2 other Jesses fighting. She realizes that there are multiple versions of her on the ship because she doesn't have to die for the Aeolus time loop to repeat.
- She looks down the stairs at the group boarding and overhears a conversation. You were shown this same angle when you saw Jess board the ship. Every camera angle on the ship is on a Jess.
- Because the main events of the Aeolus loop will always happen, you can very generally tell which Jess you're dealing with by what little things happened differently in the cycles that you've seen. For example, one Jess has blood on her face while another doesn't.
- There's only ever one hooded Jess at a time. The hooded Jess is the one who will go overboard. But there's no way of knowing how many cycles it takes to get to a Jess who will be able to put the pieces together enough to become hooded Jess.
- At this point in the film, you might also realize that every time other people interact with Jess, they're not necessarily interacting with the same Jess they boarded the ship with. This also explains why Jess always seems so confused whenever anyone talks to her.
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Hooded Jess confronts the group in the theater. Hooded Jess confronts some version of Greg and tells him that she has figured out a way out of the time loop—all she has to do is kill everyone and then not let anyone board. Now that hooded Jess knows what she has to do, she dispatches with the others quickly before confronting another Jess on the deck.
- Hooded Jess tells this new Jess that she has to kill them all, "it's the only way to save our son," and then plunges into the ocean.
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Another Jess confronts hooded Jess. Empowered by her belief, hooded Jess tells new Jess that she has to kill them all, "it's the only way to save our son," and then plunges into the ocean. If she's wrong, she's just killed herself—but she knows she's not wrong. She knows that she's found the way out of the Aeolus loop.
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Jess awakens on the shore. You see the coveralls the hooded Jess wore in the surf, so you know this is the same hooded Jess that you followed overboard. She looks around, wondering if she's really done it—if she's really broken out of the loop. She hitch-hikes home, realizing it's earlier in the morning of the same day, and she still has a chance to make things right. After the horrible ordeal of the time loop—which Jess believes is real, and she has escaped—she can come home to her son.
- Recall, though, that there were things that happened before Jess awoke on the shore before. When Jess awoke on the shore previously in the movie, she was in a dream. When she blinked, she was on Greg's boat.
- Because Greg's boat is how Jess gets to the Aeolus, this tells you that the Aeolus loop is closed—she is actually on the shore, and therefore not in Greg's boat.
Jess excitedly moves about the yard and the house, ducking to make sure the Jess in a dress doesn't see her. She sees Tommy through the window, painting a picture, and she's overcome with feeling for him. She tries to get his attention by tapping on the window and startles him, causing him to knock over a paint cup. Jess in a dress comes back inside and yells at Tommy for spilling the paint, striking him and ordering him to his room. Jess sees this through the window and is overtaken with remorse and shame, so she goes to the shed for an axe and kills Jess in a dress.
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Jess comforts Tommy and gets him out of the house. As Jess struggles with the body of the other Jess, she realizes that Tommy is looking on in horror. She calls to him and tells him that it was all just a dream—and this is the opening scene of the movie, so you know that there must be another time loop—but Jess doesn't quite know it yet.
- In this moment that she's comforting Tommy, talking about dreams and telling him to think happy thoughts, she's crying. This is the happy thought for her, holding Tommy in her arms.
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A seagull flies into the windshield as they drive away. Jess pulls over and gets out to take care of the bird and tells her son to wait in the car. A marching band is playing "Anchors Away" in a park and Jess remembers playing that song on the record player on the Aeolus. She throws the bird over onto the shore and sees piles of rotting seagull carcasses there. Now Jess knows she has not, in fact, made it out of the loop. She rushes back to the car, convinced that the best thing to do is to get as far away from the harbor area as she can.
- At this point, Jess doesn't know what the pattern of this loop is or what she has to do to break it. But she knows that it has something to do with the harbor, since getting on Greg's boat took her to the Aeolus loop.
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Jess hits a semi-truck head-on. As she's driving away, Tommy has a meltdown about the seagull blood on the windshield. Jess sprays wiper fluid and attempts to calm him. In the process, she takes her eyes off the road and drifts into the other lane, hitting the truck. You see the car upside down as well as a vantage point of the road from inside the car, so you can understand that you're seeing this from Jess's viewpoint. You see a man get out of a van and approach, then the screen goes black.
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Jess leaves the scene in a taxi and heads to the harbor. When the scene returns, bystanders are rushing around the bodies of Tommy and Jess, who is wearing a dress stained with blue paint. Jess is standing off at a distance when she is approached by a taxi cab driver who asks if she's alright. She responds by asking who he is, and he says he's just a driver. He tells her there's nothing that could bring back the boy, then asks if she wants a ride and she tells him to take her to the harbor.
- At this point, what she's doing is intentionally choosing to re-enter the loop. The driver, who she figures must somehow be "in on" everything, tells her that her son can't be saved, but she knows that he can. She knows that she can have a few more minutes with him—all she has to do is go back and "beat the loop" again.
- It's safe to assume that none of the bystanders can see either Jess or the driver. They can see the body of Jess in a dress, which Jess had stuffed in the trunk before she escaped with Tommy.
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Jess joins Greg and his other friends on The Triangle. Jess seems to drift off briefly in the taxi. When they arrive at the harbor, the driver says, "I'll leave the meter running. You will come back, won't you?" Jess replies, "Yes, I promise." But she doesn't go back. Instead, she gets on the boat with Greg, resetting the loop.
- As the film ends, a seagull flies away—perhaps to alert the powers that be that the loop must start again.

Section 5 of 7:

Popular Triangle Interpretations

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This interpretation was endorsed by Smith as one of 3 possible ways that he intended the film to be understood.^{[6]
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Research source} It is also, in one sense, the laziest interpretation, because it doesn't get into any of the emotional depth of the film. But it does make sense, given that life preservers on the Aeolus indicate she was docked in Miami.
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Eternal damnation One of the things that frustrated Jess about her autistic son was the way he would meltdown if things weren't a certain way. In the film, she says, "Every day is the same. Tommy likes things to be a certain way. Yeah. If I do one thing differently, I lose him."^{[7]
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Research source} Then she drifts off, as if experiencing the loss of her son yet again. This theory posits that the entire concept of a time loop is designed to force Jess to deal with a horrific version of the sameness and routine Tommy craved.
- The idea of this being a very personal punishment that's related in some way to her offense of being an abusive mother to a disabled child lines up with the structure of the Sisyphus myth as well.^{[8]
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Greek mythology The ship's name, Aeolus, recalls the Greek god Aeolus. In Greek mythology, Aeolus is the keeper of the winds. He is also the father of Sisyphus, the demigod who was famously punished for cheating death. Under this interpretation, the entire story of Triangle parallels the story of Sisyphus.^{[9]
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- In Triangle, the driver represents Charon, the ferryman of the Underworld in Greek mythology. Jess promised Charon that she would return, just as Sisyphus did, and then broke her promise.
- Just as Sisyphus returned just to see his beloved wife one more time, Jess wants to return so that she can see her son.
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The cycle of grief Jess was in a car accident and knows that her son is dead. Because she can't accept that he's dead and can't process the loss of her son, she keeps returning to the time loop. She will only escape the loops entirely and permanently when she's willing to finally accept that her son is dead.
- You can see this in the fact that ppl around Jess frequently ask her questions about her son, seemingly out of the blue. They are giving her an opportunity to accept his death, which she never does.
- If at any point she had replied when someone asked about her son and told them that he was dead, would the whole thing have ceased to exist? This is the kind of ambiguity Smith wanted the film to have.^{[11]
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A psychotic break This is another one of the interpretations that Smith intends to plant. The idea that Jess might just be a real person who's going crazy is hinted at several times, and characters even refer to her as "schizo." Smith also alludes to this through references to the movie The Shining, which explores psychotic breaks.^{[12]
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- For example, the room on the ship where the message is written on the mirror in blood is Room 237, the same room number as in The Shining. The ship's halls are also reminiscent of the hallways in The Stanley Hotel, where the story of The Shining took place.
- It's also worth noting that a time cycle, by definition, requires you to go through a loop of the same events, trying to escape but ultimately repeating the same cycle. This alone might be proof of insanity—as Albert Einstein once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."^{[13]
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A nightmare guilt trip Greg repeatedly asks and accuses Jess of feeling guilty—and she clearly does. She feels guilty for spending time away from her son and, when she's trapped in the loop and doesn't realize it, she's worried about getting back to it. Then, it's guilt that drives her back to save her son, and guilt that overtakes her and makes her kill the version of herself in the paint-stained dress, the version of her who yelled at her son and slapped him.
- From the guilt standpoint, you might see the gauntlet of the Aeolus loop as a sort of penance she must fulfill before she can be with her son again.
- The idea of the whole thing being a guilt trip falls under the theory that all of this is somehow happening in Jess's head, because for that to be the reason, she has to be the only character with any true agency.
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Jess is dreaming or in a coma. After the accident, Jess is left with a traumatic brain injury. In a coma, she hallucinates or dreams of the accident and the driver, who takes her to the harbor for the "one day off" she'd wished for. The loops keep repeating because she refuses to pass on because that would require her to deal with the loss of her son.
- The interesting thing about this theory is that you don't necessarily know for sure if returning to the taxi means Jess dies. It might mean that she wakes up from the coma. But either way, it means directly confronting the loss of her son, which she is unwilling to do.

Section 6 of 7:

Key Symbols in Triangle

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Aeolus is the keeper of the winds and the father of Sisyphus. He also looms large as a symbol in the movie, including as the name of the ship and on various posters on display. You can also see an "AO" on the drum of the boy in the marching band during the accident scene.
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"Anchors Aweigh" The official song of the Navy, this song was first played in 1906.^{[14]
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Go to source} There's a record of it on the Aeolus, which Jess plays. The marching band is playing the same song when Jess disposes of the dead seagull and gets into the accident with her son.
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The Driver From the moment you see him, you know the driver is no ordinary person. But in addition to that, the character can also be interpreted as a symbol—of death itself, or if Charon, the ferryman of the Underworld in Greek myth.
Smith noted that Number 237 is an intentional nod to Hitchcock and his movie The Shining. Jess's house number is 237. On the ship, the room where the message was written in blood on the bathroom mirror is also 237.
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Sailboat In the opening scenes of the film, Jess picks up a capsized sailboat in the wading pool in the yard. Later, she glances at a sticky note reminding her to meet her friend Greg and go sailing on his yacht, The Triangle.
- The capsized sailboat triggers anger in Jess. Before Tommy knocked over the paint, Jess had been yelling at him about leaving his toys outside.
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Seagulls Seagulls are one of the first sounds of the film. Throughout, they always seem to be around at the scene of significant events. The seagull that flies into Jess's car might also bring to mind The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which the killing of an albatross results in a lifetime of bad luck.
- Jess always looks perplexed when she sees seagulls, even in a perfectly normal context, such as out at sea. This shows you that she understands that they're significant or symbolic in some way.
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Triangles/Threes Triangles serve as a visual symbol throughout the film. The sail of a sailboat is shaped like a triangle, and Greg's boat is named The Triangle. There are also 3 key locations that are part of the time loop: Jess's house, Greg's boat, and the cruise ship.
- You might even consider the fact that Smith offers up 3 valid understandings of the film to be part of this symbology in a meta way.

Section 7 of 7:

Putting It All Together

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The car wreck is the only event you can say with certainty happened. The loop is set off because Jess breaks her promise to the driver. Jess's interaction with the driver happens after she (or her soul) gets out of the car after the accident. She promises to come back, but she breaks that promise, returning to the loop. Once in the loop, she forgets what she's uncovered about the loop and only wants to get back to her son.
- Figuring out how to get back to her son means figuring out about the time loops and uncovering the truth about how she treated her son shortly before the accident.
- In one sense, you can imagine her motivations continually cycling, just like the loop itself, keeping everything enclosed in an infinite loop.