"The Triangle" - It Only Feels Like It's Four Years Long

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0271237/

The Triangle. Starring Luke Perry and Dan Cortese.Your bad guy is a geographic area that's possessed an old guy on a ship but the ship is also possessed. Kind of hard to pin down, actually.

Don’t Be Fooled: This isn’t the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries event starring Eric Stoltz. This is MUCH worse. Best for us to this “Luke Perry’s ‘The Triangle’” (it has a Tyler Perry ring to it) or LPTT for short.

Before I even get into reviewing the actual movie, which isn’t really worth it, I think it’s important to talk about the key differences between a movie like LPTT and “Mansquito.” It takes real skill to make a piece of art that’s objectively “bad” but still enjoyable for the intended audience. But to do so, I think, requires a level of self-awareness on the artist that the art is going to be “bad,” and nothing can stop it from being “bad,” so what the hell, let’s make that art about a transgendered mosquito/human hybrid and see what happens. That’s not to say that the art *will* be enjoyable for the audience, but it at least leaves the door open. It’s a more dangerous path into an artistic Bermuda Triangle when the artist makes art that’s likely to be objectively “bad” but doesn’t have a sense of humor about it. A stiff upper lip, like what’s seen in LPTT, is a severe liability; this film doesn’t have enough of a budget or enough talent to take itself seriously. Science fiction is a tough genre to do well these days; especially with a low budget. Off the top of my head, the really good Sci-Fi films I’ve seen with a tiny budget are: “Primer,” “Cube,” and, um, like “Cube 2.” It’s not easy. What we’ve got here, with LPTT, is a movie that doesn’t want to believe it’s going to be bad. But it has Dan Cortese on the cover.

Which brings us to the first mystery you’ll undoubtedly experience in the mysterious triangle; where the hell you remember Dan Cortese from and who, exactly, made him famous. To be honest, I thought the dude was a decathlete for a few minutes there. Then, a “Real World” cast member. I looked him up online, and still can’t remember. MTV Sports? That was a show?

Anyway, your opening sequence is Cortese in a vintage, on a cruise ship, walking down a corridor with blood on the walls. A woman, Olivia D’Abo (say it isn’t so) comes running towards him. Hell yeah! Action! Excitement! A Non-Stop Thrill Ride!

No. It’s a dream sequence. But hold onto it, because it’s like the only interesting thing that happens for the next hour. And a half. And you know what? Don’t hold onto it, because they actually replay the damn flashback three times.

(Which reminds me – is there really a plot device more insulting to the audience than an internal flashback? Seriously, I just saw whatever it was ten minutes ago. I’m not talking about “The Sixth Sense” style, where the internal flashback shows you scenes of the movie from a different angle (and telling a different story). I’m talking about an instant replay of the movie you’re watching. Seriously.)

Anyway, Cortese is a lawyer, Perry is his old friend who everyone thinks is rich but is really broke. They go on a marlin fishing trip to the triangle with their sidekick, the mythology-obsessed Guy Who Is Obviously Going to Die First, and a charter boat crew of two (a guy named Captain Morgan – hayo! – and D’Abo, yes, the woman of Cortese’s dreams).

Long, long, incredibly torturous story short, they go to the triangle, their fishing boat breaks down, they see the mysterious ocean liner from Cortese’s dreams, they board it, if you didn’t know that as soon as they boarded the thing their own boat would disappear you should really stop drinking and conserve brain cells, the boat is evil and cursed and stuff, Perry gets possessed and tries to take all the gold on board and kills most everybody, but then they kill him and blow up the ship.

But oh, boy, on the way, there’s just not a whole lot of:

What It Has Going for It: Pretty much everything that’s unintentional. D’Abo slips in and out of her British accent, but in a way that lends some credibility to her being a worldly Caribbean first mate.

The funniest part of the film is in the happy-super-fun part just before the evil stuff, when the characters are catching stock-footage marlin in the triangle. There’s a cutaway shot of Perry reeling in a marlin, but the tackle part of the reel is hidden off camera, and, well, let’s just go to the tape.

Awesome is the only word.

The only truly, honestly creepy part of the film comes at around the 1:41 mark. While running around generally being uninteresting, a character descends a staircase and you see a shadow at the top of the stairs. This really is some sweet M. Night cinematography, right? No. It’s the damn cameraman. Seriously. But for a split second, you think they actually got legitimately spooky.

At one point in the film, just about every character gets nailed upside the head with a cricket bat. If this isn’t a Lebowski homage - and it’s probably not - I just don’t want to know.But boy, by that point, you want them to "takes what they have on you and calls it even."

What Sucks About It: Back up the boat. There’s some weird voodoo sequence in the beginning where they stumble upon some vampire locals and run away. It’s just confusing.

While watching it, you’ll begin to notice that the evil and cursed boat is actually either lazy or just not very good at being evil and possessed. For example, it takes control of Perry and has him try to kill everyone off. Sure. But why not possess two people? Or everybody? About five or six times, after the characters leave a room, the ship turns knobs on its own, to break the radio, move an elevator, or just be generally creepy. Got it; the ship can do stuff on its own. So, at the end, Cortese blows up the ship by somehow knowing which valve to open on the deck to release fuel oil – let’s remember that he’s a lawyer, not Edgar from Deadliest Catch. The oil spills and spills while the good guys get away in a small boat, and the ship turns itself around and chases them. Cortese shoots a flare onto the ship and blows the ship up. You’re thinking – if the ship can turn itself around, why can’t it just close the valve?

Right at the end, there’s a scene where Cortese is walking down a hallway on the cruise ship, which is caked with blood. You get excited; maybe this is going to be a coming-full-circle moment, where he meets his destiny which he’s seen in his dreams – and so does D’Abo. Hell, maybe they’re actually dead or something, and this is them replaying their sad stories over and over again because of the evil mystery of the Triangle. It could happen – the old they’re-really-dead trick has been used to pretty solid effect a lot, but it still doesn’t get old. Mostly. So, sweet? No. Not sweet. It just turns into more running around and whacking with cricket bats.

But I’ll say this; that scene is the absolute scariest part of the movie, because therein you see the third instance of the internal flashback from the beginning of the film. It last just long enough where you’re a little concerned – irrationally so – that the film might actually be starting itself over again. When that prospect is more terrifying than the scares in the movie, you’re in some trouble.

“Point Break: The Musical” Moment: You’re on an evil haunted ship in the Bermuda triangle with your boyfriend, Luke Perry, and his buddies. You’re kind of a wet blanket, in that you didn’t want to intrude on his trip with his friends, but then once you intruded, you just want to go home. (The audience empathizes with you). Perry’s been acting weird since you got on the ship, half because he’s secretly broke, half because he’s possessed by some movie star from the 30’s. Don’t ask. Anyway, Perry’s wandering around like the Leprechaun trying to get the gold on the ship. While he’s away, his friend, the Guy Who’s Going to Die First, goes and dies. Of, like, a heart attack. So you find that Guy, and freak out, and now you’re running around the ship. You find Perry in the vault, loading pieces of eight into a chest of booty. (We wish; rather, he’s pointing at some papers and dancing around). The first point you make to him in this delicate situation is:

A. “While you’re off being possessed, your friend died.”

B. “Oh my God! Your friend died.”

C. “Put down the bearer bonds, Hans, your friend is dead.”

D. “Why are you so broke?!?” Followed, two minutes later, by mentioning that his friend is dead.

Take a guess.

Actual Quotes My Girlfriend Who Again Watched the First Twenty Minutes Before Falling Asleep: “Oh my god, that guy is so going to be the first guy who dies.”

Truth in Beauty and Vice Versa Moment: At the very end, after our heroes escape the triangle, there’s a voiceover news report from the carribbean that says that the survivors of the fishing boat Bluejay were picked up that day. But, the report says, that’s weird because the Bluejay was lost at sea four years ago. Woo-WOO-Woo! I know they were going for the old time-warp bit, but really, this is the most self-aware the movie gets. (Except for the part where you can see the cameraman.) By this time in the movie, you’ll think it’s been four years, too.

How This Relates to Michigan Football: Like the Notre Dame game, this is one to forget. The scariest parts are at the beginning, followed by what felt like four years of general unpleasantness, some gruesomeness, and then a vague disgust at the end that all of this could have been – and has been – done better. And it was really wet.