Christopher Smith
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There are moments which recall The Orphanage (a creepy game of 'What's the time, Mr Wolf?', for instance) and it's certainly in that classier vein of period horror – see also The Innocents and The Others – with its credibility enhanced immeasurably by Brown Findlay, who brings guts and pathos to Marianne's plight.
The effort from director Christopher Smith is undoubtedly inspired by the likes of The Others , The Changeling , and most recently Crimson Peak .
The same goes for obvious inspirations on this project like “The Innocents” or “The Others.”
This has led to classics like 1961’s The Innocents , the more recent The Others , and the underrated The Little Stranger .
In substance and tenor, this costume piece fits nicely into the general category of Brit period ghost stories, like The Woman in Black and The Others .
— whisper-sniveling dialogue like “Denial is the teat on which the beast will suckle,” and you’re well on your way toward sating a Gothic horror fan’s lifelong hunger for new films in the spirit of “The Innocents,” “The Haunting,” and “The Others.”
The Hunt reminded me, with its human hunting, vicious glee and abundance of hideous deaths, of 2006 British horror comedy Severance .
The gonzo violence brings to mind Christopher Smith's 2006 horror comedy Severance and the stinging humour is akin to Jordan Peele's Get Out .
It's a complicated time-bending plot in the same vein as Memento, made on what appears to be a very small budget.
Triangle has been compared to the equally-intricate Christopher Nolan film, Memento (2000), and not unfairly.
There's plenty to fear and enough pre- The Conjuring inspirations to exist outside formidable competition, yet not enough to generate overwhelming reactions.
Of course, most films based on first-hand accounts of haunted houses are heavily altered if not out-right fabricated, perhaps none more frequently than those which recount the cases of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, among them Amityville Horror and The Conjuring franchise.
If the story had been kept simple, The Banishing could have been another The Woman in Black or The Conjuring ; but no.
However, if you’re looking for the kind of scares that movies like The Conjuring and Poltergeist offer, you won’t find them here.
Triangle (2009; Amazon Prime Video, Hoopla, Tubi, Crackle, rentable): When I did dive into the hive-mind discussion of Tenet, I found someone adamantly recommending this acclaimed yet little-known Australian horror thriller as a more successful treatment of the "reversing time" theme.
The third act itself is also reminiscent of other media like the novel House of Leaves and the 2009 horror-thriller Triangle , but these fan favorites handle their similarities better than this film can even consider attempting.
…its middle section is set on a ship in dangerous seas, evoking the Bermuda Triangle or Christopher Smith’s oceanic mystery Triangle (2009)…
…its middle section is set on a ship in dangerous seas, evoking the Bermuda Triangle or Christopher Smith’s oceanic mystery Triangle…
There are moments which recall The Orphanage (a creepy game of 'What's the time, Mr Wolf?', for instance) and it's certainly in that classier vein of period horror – see also The Innocents and The Others – with its credibility enhanced immeasurably by Brown Findlay, who brings guts and pathos to Marianne's plight.
There are also parallels with Christopher Smith’s very fine medieval thriller, “Black Death,” in the way that the film takes an arresting shift in the final act.
Sean Harris chews the scenery as a quirky occultist, with a haircut reminiscent of Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland .
6:45 is certainly not the first genre film to borrow its circular structure from Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day (1993) – something which has already been done, for example, in Dario Piana’s The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007), Chris Smith’s Triangle (2009), Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Resolution (2012) and The Endless(2017), Vincenzo Natali’s Haunter (2013), Park Hong-min’s Alone (Hon-ja, 2015), Madellaine Paxson’s Blood Punch (2014), Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day (2017), its sequel Happy Death Day 2U (2019), Natasha Kermani’s Lucky (2020) and J.R. Sawyers’ Before I’m Dead (2021).
Here one can easily trace the intertextual play with Dead Calm, Adrift, Ghost Ship, The Shining, TimeCrimes , Carnival of Souls – and even the infernal crabs from Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End put in an uncanny appearance.
Its genre roots are obvious – in Hollywood pitch-lingo, it would be 'The Shining meets Groundhog Day, with a little Final Destination mixed-in" – but Triangle’s creative team are asking a lot more of their audience than just to sit back and enjoy the jolts.
One of the most original and effective horror movies in the last twenty years, Triangle audaciously blends Groundhog Day style temporal disturbance with the empty eeriness of The Shining .
Triangle Chris Smith’s first two films, Creep (2004) and Severance (2006), have both been featured at past FrightFests, so having as this year’s festival opener the world premiere of his third film just adds to the sense of homecoming.
It literally repeats scenes with only slight differences, kind of like Groundhog Day but without Ned and the laughs.
Its genre roots are obvious – in Hollywood pitch-lingo, it would be 'The Shining meets Groundhog Day, with a little Final Destination mixed-in" – but Triangle’s creative team are asking a lot more of their audience than just to sit back and enjoy the jolts.
One of the most original and effective horror movies in the last twenty years, Triangle audaciously blends Groundhog Day style temporal disturbance with the empty eeriness of The Shining .
Ultimately, Blair Witch is a film that contains elements and imagery from many other well-regarded pieces of indie horror from the last 15 years, from the genuinely frightening conclusion to REC to the central plot twist of Christopher Smith’s 2009 film Triangle.
Here there are lots of dead Richies, piling up like the cloned cadavers in Triangle (2009), Moon (2009) or Blood Punch (2004) – but the only time our repeatedly renate antihero is actually called ‘dick’, the word is used as a term of abuse rather than as a diminutive form of his name.
Concocting a story that feels like a cross between “The Lovely Bones” and 2009’s little-seen “Triangle,” Natali has made impressively literal use of teenage ennui, physically confining his disaffected heroine to her boring life at the point of her life during which she most yearns for escape.
But like Memento and, perhaps more fittingly, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001), Triangle offers instances of gleeful, electrifying suspense (I challenge anyone not to utter a gasp during Rachel Carpani’s final moments as Sally) and moments of blinding recognition, when you think you’ve figured out Jess’ mystery, only to have Smith twist the screws a little tighter, blur the reality a little more.
Colored in desaturated grays not unlike those of its contemporaries of both the art-house (Valhalla Rising) and Hollywood( Kingdom of Heaven) varieties, Smith’s film nonetheless distinguishes itself by matching its apocalyptic overtones with a look at man’s inherent brutality that’s more insistently dispiriting than thrilling.
The effort from director Christopher Smith is undoubtedly inspired by the likes of The Others , The Changeling , and most recently Crimson Peak .