Product: The Triangle / 2103: The Deadly Wake (2011)
Rating: 2.0
"Remain calm or die!" Some choice.
The Triangle.Tommy Devane (Dan Cortese) is having the same nightmares as Charlotte Duval (Olivia d'Abo), a woman he's yet to meet. This is never a good thing. Stu Sheridan (Luke Perry) is having money problems but doesn't let that stop him from going on a fishing vacation with his best buds and the girlfriend no one expected him to bring. Also, not a good thing. The third bud in this triangle is Gus Gruber (David Hewlett), a man obsessed with the Bermuda Triangle. He has heart issues and routinely pops pills for this condition. Obviously, a very bad thing. With little money amongst them, they are forced to hire a crappy boat skippered by Captain Louis Morgan (Dorian Harewood). His first mate is the aforementioned Charlotte of the dreams. If this connection is supposed to be spooky or unsettling, it doesn't work. Neither does the voodoo ceremony that takes place (but didn't take place?) and doesn't really have anything to do with the matter at hand: they go fishing and end up in the triangle with a lost ship from a bygone era. They board said ship for a variety of bad reasons and immediately lose their fishing boat. Stu becomes possessed or just shows his mean streak, hard to tell with the level of acting at Luke Perry's disposal. His character goes from being obnoxiously exuberant to almost devoid of any personality whatsoever. He scowl's a lot. It makes him look really old (when he was trying to come across as deranged?).It's a limp ghost story with only one visible/invisible ghost: a little boy with grabby hands. Treasure of a sort was involved, everyone just wanted to go home, not everyone made it, and the last minute remarks only added to the overall confusion of the piece. I don't know what they were trying for: adventure on the high seas, a crazy friend on a killing spree, or a spooky ghost story lacking in ghosts. It didn't succeed on any level, even as a simple buddy flick it failed. The level of suspense is nil. There's little in the way of atmosphere. The characters are uniformly dull. Is there a rating lower than G? Any bite that the story might have had was either not written in or was censored for television? There was very little to like or dislike. They played it safe and it shows.As for the second feature, 2103 The Deadly Wake, I'm still trying to figure out the title. Wake as in boat or wake as in "get up!?" Whatever, it's a low low low budget film; most of the action takes place on board a ship and a triangle room somewhere else. The cast is mostly unknown or has-beens (Michael Pare & Malcolm McDowell). Not a great deal of emoting was expected from anyone, including baby, the ship's brain (literally, a baby in a jar, hooked to the ship with cables and wires). The action is sparse, the plot flimsy, the special effects laughable, not a lot of effort went into this production, and it shows. The story: a disgraced drunkard (Malcolm McDowell) is tricked into commanding a ship with dubious cargo....by the same people who led to his disgrace on a previous occasion. The crew, convicts. The cargo is toxic waste and a plague virus. The owners don't want the ship to reach its destination so bombs are planted onboard, twice. Also onboard is a dancer-bot who kills almost everyone by moving deliberately like a dancer (in itself, very bizarre, but also very stupid). The slow pacing didn't help, nor did filming everything in odd shades like sepia or blue tones. With few likable characters and an uninvolving story, by the end I really didn't care who won or who didn't, I was just glad it was over. At 100 minutes, it felt like 4 hours!