Review of Triangle, The

Introduction

Some friends leave their business side of life in the city and get together and go on a holiday fishing trip in the north Atlantic area near the much talked about Bermuda triangle. They soon realise that they are caught in the realistic nightmare and cannot find their bearings on board their boat and become totally lost. To make matters worse they discover an abandoned ship called ‘Queen of Scots’ that disappeared sixty years ago with rumoured valuables. One of the characters acts in a bizarre way and turns against his friends in nasty ways as he searches out this small fortune; legend says it’s the work of a vengeful spirit known as Bacalou.
Two of the characters have the same dreams that they share with each other and determine that they can sense what is about to happen. After deciding to board this ghost ship everyone starts to fall apart, they all split up and go separate ways. The captain of their charter is in search for some tools to get their boat running again, until he discovers that their boat is gone and they are all left stranded on the ‘Queen of Scots’.

Video

The movie is shown in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 the picture transfer is clear and clean looking; the colours are bold and clear too, the characters skin tones are realistic and clean. There are some bright outdoor shots; even when there is no sun helping out that you can see when they arrive at their holiday destination. The underwater shots are clear and bright enough and do not lose detail also.
There are some realistic holiday town location visuals, compared to the busy street scenes and city life before they venture out. The yachts in the moorings let you know that they have arrived as well as the sights of beaches and narrow streets with simplistic buildings.
The set designs are a bit less lavish, once onboard the ship it was only the corridors that lead me to believe that they were on this huge ship, and maybe the engine room all other rooms didn’t look that realistic enough for interiors of a ship. And worse than that were the cheap optical effects, the ship that looked like cardboard, was placed on the water and was only viewed from one main angle throughout the movie until it attempts to turn around and chase the survivors. The ship explosion effect at the end is again badly done, although you can tell what is going on.
Blackwashes come on now and again to integrate chapters similar to as if it were a TV series/movie and these were the commercial break markers, it wasn’t too annoying but did feel like you were watching the movie in parts.

Audio

The audio is in Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 and features some directional audio effects from left to right in a few scenes, the night scene on the deck of the boat is one example. The dialogue is clear even with the lack of a centre channel and the ambience effects are can be picked up quite good; waves, birds and sounds of enjoyment are mainly featured at the holiday destination whilst the creaking of doors and wood can be heard onboard the chartered boat. Ghostly whispers are the most you hear inside the ship for representation of something stirring and keeping an eye on the characters.
The music in this movie has a bit of variety in it to suit the scenes but does centre on sinister strings and has a haunting quality about it. The music plays a suspenseful theme through the ships interiors and gives it the desired atmosphere. Some of the other variations are an eighties style ‘happy tune’ that includes some trumpet, featured during the fishing scene where everyone is having some fun; some Caribbean style music that includes the likes of metal drums and flutes and a voodoo rhythm in some scenes.

Features

Movie footage plays centre stage on the opening menu, a few static shots lines the left hand side. The title is at the bottom and ‘The Silver Collection’ is stated at the top. The options available are to play movie, scene selection, subtitle toggle and trailer. The whole display is brightly animated but is really just window dressing and nothing else is included.

Conclusion

A nice idea for a movie to be based on and probably has variations of plot similar somewhere out there in other movies. This could have been made well and be more realistic and haunting but this version is more ‘tongue in cheek’ and the more you tick off on your mental list about the movie the less you enjoy it. The storage hold flooding with fast water that never seems to drown the characters is just one of those scenes, and the fact that two of them find time to dance and laugh together when they are suppose to be in a crisis on a missing ship, their boat is broke and has gone and the fact that they are lost in the Bermuda triangle out in the Atlantic goes to show the strange realism behind a storyline like this!