HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 7
Six Decades: 1st of 2 films from the 00's

Yet another movie that I really thought I had seen before, and in fact I'm sure I've seen at least the first half hour. I had always remembered this as a fascinating but ultimately incomprehensible storyline, but now I'm wondering if I never finished watching it, because I didn't remember that last act at all.

OK, so this thing sets up like Dead Calm meets The Shining. Or imagine an alternate version of Ghost Ship which actually gets better after they get on the ship instead of disintegrating into a pile of garbage like that movie did. The brightly sunlit atmosphere of psychological horror that Christopher Smith conjures into being here is worthy of appreciation itself, especially given the rather pulpy exploitation and low budget feel to the production. But this is ultimately one of those cinematic puzzles, so a discussion is impossible for me without delving into spoilers so fair warning: don't read further if you haven't seen this movie yet - and you really should see it, it's awesome.

Full disclosure: this puzzle defeated me. Perhaps I should criticise it for being too confusing or for not giving me enough clues to figure it out. But I'd rather take the more positive view that this is a fiendishly complex idea which maybe not everyone is supposed to be able to figure out for themselves. Maybe we should celebrate a movie that necessitates reams of online content from fans explaining what the fuck actually happened here. Or maybe I'm just a bit dim and you figured this out for yourself no problem at all, in which case I guess the joke's on me.

But yes, I did jump on Youtube to see a number of "Triangle EXPLAINED" vids listed. After watching the shortest one (17 minutes! Yes, it's really complicated!) I now think I understand it. See, I did realise that this was a time loop situation - that much is pretty obvious - but I was confused as to why the same thing didn't just happen over and over again. Sometimes it deviated, and sometimes it didn't. The explanation is that this loop needs to run through two iterations before repeating those two iterations again. So, every second "Jess" acts slightly differently to the one before, but then the third "Jess" replicates the first and the fourth replicates the second. See? EASY!!!

Also, and this is something the YT video I watched got wrong, IMO, I finally realised the reference to Aeolus and Sisyphus. Sally explains the Sisyphus myth as being about a man who is cursed to push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back over him over and over again for eternity as a punishment because "He cheated Death. No, he made a promise to Death that he didn't keep." In the final sequence of the film, right after the car crash, Jess is approached by a taxi driver who offers to take her wherever she wants to go. When he takes her to the marina, as she gets out he says "Hey. I'll leave the meter running. You will come back, won't you?" to which she promises she will.

But she has no intention of coming back. She's going back on the yacht because she wants to prevent her son's death - she literally plans to cheat death. And so her fate is sealed: she will wake up on the yacht in a couple of hours with no memory of what has gone before, just an eerie sense of deja vu. And she will play out this nightmare again and again for all eternity, and the boulder of her son's death will roll back over her every time.

It's ridiculously complicated - this movie makes Predestination seem simple - but once it all came together in my head, it really gave me a thrill. This is some ambitious shit. And I think, whether or not you figure out all the permutations and the ultimate meaning of what is going on, it's always going to be an entertaining experience.

Also, I have to love this because it's basically a modern Ozploitation film. Part of me wishes they just let these characters be Australian. Their American accents sound pretty tenuous to me, and that looks a lot more like Southport, Queensland than Miami (it even says Southport Marina on the sign which I figured works for both, but Southport, Florida is nowhere near Miami - then again only an obsessive compulsive maniac would be bothered to find that out - you're welcome). But regardless, it's a great piece of work and once again I find myself loving Christopher Smith's work - love that guy.