Triangle (2009) is a horror movie with a few twists that I thought Ms. Spenser would enjoy. I wound up liking it a lot more than her. By the way - tons of spoilers for this.
We start with single mom Melissa George getting her autistic son ready for school: comforting him about a nightmare, cleaning his fingerpaints off the floor, assuring him that the mess on the floor is gone, and he doesn't have to look. The only odd thing is that her doorbell rings, and there's no one there. There are some hints that she is pretty stressed, but there is a note on her fridge about a boat named "Triangle" in the marina.
The Triangle is a large sailboat, captained by Michael Dorman, a nice guy who met George at the diner she works at. His friends Henry Nixon (a fratboyish rich jerk) and Rachel Carpani have brought along their friend Emma Lung, hoping to set her up with Dorman. Carpani thinks George is after his money, but she really means that a waitress with a kid on the spectrum is below their social class. Dorman doesn't care - his mate on the boat is a 19-year-old hunk (Liam Hemsworth) who he found homeless and gave him a place to live.
But when Hemsworth shows up with George, he says he doesn't think she's ok. He asked where her kid is and she just blanked for a while. Doesn't matter, they're all going cruising!
Then the wind stops, the radio doesn't work, and a huge storm comes up, capsizing the boat. Everyone makes it up onto the hull, except Lung. We don't see her again. Then an old cruise ship comes into view, and they come onboard. But they find it deserted.
Two things here that Ms. Spenser wanted to know: 1) Why didn't they start the motor when the wind died? 2) Why did they spend so much time messing around on the boat, instead of heading straight for the bridge?
Anyway, they start noticing weird things, like messages written in blood. Then the murders start. A masked figure with a rifle kills pretty much everyone but George. When she tosses the figure overboard. she sees the upside-down Triangle with all the survivors, including herself on the hull. It's a time loop movie now, as well as a slasher. (Spoilers 1 and 2.)
As she watches the party repeat what they did the first time, she realizes that she had caused some of the weirdness from last time. She tries to save everyone, but soon learns the trick (second to last spoiler) - when everyone in the party is dead, it repeats. When it repeats, if she keeps them from getting on the ship, they might get rescued. So she now has to kill everyone on board to get another chance. That's right, she was the masked shooter.
And since she was the masked shooter, who she threw overboard, she eventually gets thrown overboard herself (last spoiler). She wakes up onshore! She can get back to her kid! And it's still the morning she left. So we see the events I mentioned at the top, and find out what they really mean.
Now, aside from the two issues mentioned above, Ms. Spenser's big complaint was that this whole thing looked like it was going to be a Ghost Ship story, which she likes. Then it became a slasher, which she doesn't like, then a time loop story, which is fine, but she wanted a Ghost Ship, damn it!
On the other hand, I thought it was kind of clever. They sort of tease that George is cracking up, with memory problems - like did she just forget who rang the doorbell? Hemsworth in particular thinks she's nuts. Well, he gets a particularly gruesome death.
But I have to agree, they should have done more Ghost Ship stuff.
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