Triangle of Sadness

Celebrity model couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged boat captain (Woody Harrelson). What first appeared instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island and fighting for survival.

Triangle of Sadness was one of the disturbingly worst experiences I’ve had in a theater in a long time. I don’t like using the word ‘pretentious’, (I feel like describing something as pretentious is such a subjective opinion) but Triangle of Sadness comes as close as I’ve ever seen to get me to use it. Interestingly enough, it actually starts out decently well. We meet our two main protagonists as they're on a date and the discussion throughout the dinner touches on subjects of gender roles, influencer status, and others. If the film had stayed like that I actually might have considered Triangle of Sadness a decent-to-possibly-good movie instead of a disaster. However, there’s a scene about halfway through where a storm is brewing, and the social elite are eating dinner with the captain of the yacht they’re on. The crash of the waves mixed with the dinner results in a far too drawn out scene reminiscent of the pie eating scene in Stand by Me that results in everyone…uh…relieving themselves from both the attic and basement, if you catch my drift. It’s paired with a weird drunken discussion between the captain and a Russian man arguing about the merits of socialism vs capitalism, Marxism, and a couple other things. I did some research after the fact as I was confused on just what the heck exactly the scene was going for. From what I could gather in my research, it looks like the point was to paint the pompous, obscenely rich idiots as simply ignorant of their actions, as earlier in the film they had forced the entire crew to go swimming with them, resulting in the food going bad before being prepared for the meal. The scene was gross all by itself, but it was odd being paired with the conversation/argument between the captain and the Russian man. That kind of lesson about the ultra-rich could have easily been done a multitude of more effective ways that were not so disturbing and gross. Once the storm scene is over, the film then veers into Lord of the Flies territory where the survivors of the capsized ship argue about how to get back home, and who is in charge. It felt like Triangle of Sadness couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a dark comedy, a tragedy, or some kind of weird action/adventure romp with a touch of satirical lessons peppered throughout. Due to this, I cannot for the life of me figure out why it's received such good reviews, and I cannot recommend sitting down to watch it unless you can stand to watch an overly long scene of dozens of people throwing up and soiling themselves during a storm being weirdly paired with a politically charged conversation intertwined throughout.