Bristol-born film director (and scriptwriter) Christopher Smith has already made an impact with the horror movies ‘Creep’ (2004) and ‘Severance’ (2006). While the former is a deeply nasty ‘This may happen if you use the London Underground’ tale set in a labyrinth of hidden tunnels beneath the city’s streets, the latter is located in a mountain region of Eastern Europe and will have you think twice about ever taking up a job for a multi-national weapons company.

Now Christopher has unleashed his third work of twisted genius – this time with a chilling tale of psychological horror on the high seas. ‘Triangle’ was chosen for the opening gala at last year’s FrightFest and was received with much praise both by critics and fans alike. Rightly so, if I may add! The film plays tricks with your mind due to its complex and multi-layered storyline. As soon as you think you know what’s going on… the story veers off in a new direction.
Film News caught up with director Christopher Smith for an interview:

Film News:
Christopher, one of your main inspirations for ‘Triangle’ was Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’…

Christopher Smith:
Definitely. I made it as obvious as possible; I even included a ‘Room 237’ in my film.

FN:
As chilling and mysterious as your film is, I also see it as a morality tale along the lines of ‘The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’.

CS:
That’s so true, because of the seagulls in the film as well. I had been trying for a long while to actually make that film. I started to write the script and gave it to my agent to read and probably only got as far as loop 2 when I went mental. I said to my agent “Am I insane here, or this gonna be alright for a film, or am I going crazy?” and he said, “You should look at ‘The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner’ and read it.” So I tried for a long while to add elements of that and have a wedding sequence. Then there’s the aspect of the Bermuda Triangle. We were playing with the idea of having Jess (the main character) getting off the boat and attending her son’s wedding, because the myth of the Bermuda Triangle is that you disappear and come back years later. I very nearly had her come back thirty years later to attend his wedding, while thirty years ago she had left him to run off with a handsome man and never came back to pick him up from school. So it almost worked.

FN:
Although ‘Triangle’ has obviously a fixed storyline, it gives the audience enough room for their own interpretations. However, as a director you still need to guide an audience - how did you decide to throw vital hints, without giving too much away?

CS:
I think it’s a really good question. It’s exactly what happens when you’re editing, you ask yourself “Are we ahead of you or behind you, or where do we start to get anchors”. If you’re always so far ahead of the audience, then they become annoyed and tired that you make them feel so stupid, so they will instead blame the film. There are moments when I throw verbal questions at the audience, for example when the other characters in the film say that she (Jess) is crazy. I think in the armoury sequence where she starts to write the notes you begin to think she’s lost her mind because she’s talking to herself. I think the movie reeks of her whole breakdown; there are always lots of shots with multiple mirrors where she’s seeing herself. Of course, the film is also about her guilt of being a bad mother or simply just being a bad person. You can never escape your own guilt. All those evil things on the ship happen because of her, but she can’t remember why. Although in the end, it becomes obvious why. She realizes that she isn’t the mother she thought she was and that’s the morality aspect of it.

FN:
When you gave the cast the script to read, did you wait how they would perceive the story, or did you insist on your own perception?

CM:
I tried to follow the Woody Allen philosophy. You try to see what their interpretation of the script is, before you impose yours. If their interpretation is better than yours, you use theirs. If not, you put something back. Melissa (Melissa George who plays Jess) didn’t see it as a psychological breakdown-story, or rather, she didn’t see that in it. It’s hard to impose that into her performance and go “Try to behave as though…” So what I did with Melissa was I said, “Look, you have to act each scene as though it’s happening and then look at each scene”. That’s tricky for an actor, because an actor would like to go where they can build their performance and put shape into it, so they’re not at level 10, twenty minutes into the plot with nowhere left to go. But of course, the way the story works is that you have to be at level 10, because you’re being chased by a shotgun and about to get killed – you can’t underplay that.

FN:
The movie’s title, ‘Triangle’, is slightly misleading because strictly speaking, it’s not about the Bermuda Triangle…

CS:
I did that deliberately. I like the title and the echoes of the Bermuda Triangle. Originally it was an idea and for some people the idea is naff, for others it’s kind of cool. But yes, it’s deliberately misleading but at the same time sells the mythology to those who want it. So yeah, I felt for those who wanted it to be that, it’s fine. For those who don’t wanted it to be that, it’s about a triangle, like three sides to a character. It still works as an enigmatic title, I think.

FN:
What’s your next project?

CS:
It’s about the Black Death (also the movie’s title) and the corrupting influence of religion. It looks back at medieval England and says “Do we see similarities to now?”
It’s like a parable - it’s a gruesome story about your fear of what’s out there is usually worse than what’s really out there. So it’s a horror in the sense of a horror story rather than a horror movie, I would say.