247°F (2011) Reviews

• It's difficult to warm to 247°F

  Siamois2012-10-15

  Four friends gather for a weekend trip that turns into a nightmare when three of them end up stuck inside of a sauna. There's not much to go on other than that for a synopsis but movies banking on a claustrophobic vibe have tackled even bigger challenges. One only has to think about Buried, featuring Ryan Reynolds all alone and six feet under. A good screenplay featuring rich characters and interesting conflicts could probably have carried 247°F but unfortunately, this wasn't the case here. 247°F features cookie-cutter protagonists who follow the usual formula but without much savvy and no heart. Of course, you've got the prototypical troubled girl as the main character. Her carefree hot female friend. The cynical jock who is the hottie's insensitive boyfriend and of course, the more down to earth dude who may or may not hook up with our heroin. Georgia is a country that more and more international productions are turning to for cost-effective shooting, so I suppose they might as well turn to making their own movies. This one has the look and production values of a typical American straight-to-video. The problem here is the story, the screenplay. The movie begins by highlighting the past of Jenna, a now quiet girl who survived a car accident but lost her boyfriend. 247°F takes place three years later, as a medicated Jenna still struggles to get past that tragedy. Unfortunately, the screenplay and direction never make this gripping. One could hope the story would finally take off once the three characters get stuck inside but this is not the case either. There is no character development, not much in the way of interesting conflicts. No smart thinking and not much drama unfolding other than the three of them successively losing their temper or arguing pointlessly. All of this intersecting with a few scenes featuring people on the outside going about their business. Will the three find a way out? Will someone on the outside help them? Those two questions are what 247°F is all about but unfortunately, the screenplay doesn't build much suspense. The audience is simply left waiting with very little sense of anticipation being built up. Scout Taylor-Compton is adequate as Jenna. The other protagonists are played by standard B-movie actors probably picked because they are nice too look at. The music score is decent. There are no major faults as far as cinematography... but as a whole, this is below average film making with no heart, because such a story demands a much richer screenplay. It should also be mentioned that despite this being listed in the horror genre, there is very little here that qualifies the movie as such. (I personally did not mind and I did not lower the rating for that, but think it deserves to be mentioned so that others won't be disappointed)

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• Kids Trapped in a Sauna... No More, No Less

  gavin69422012-10-14

  Four friends travel to a lakeside cabin for a carefree weekend, the fun turns into a nightmare when 3 of them end up locked in a hot sauna. Every minute counts and every degree matters as they fight for their lives in the heat up to 247°F. The most interesting thing about this movie is that it was filmed in Georgia (the country, not the state). I was not aware that people filmed movies in Georgia and used a Georgian crew, but I will assume this is a cost issue. But yeah, beyond that, not much going on here. Tyler Mane has gained a horror following due to his part in Rob Zombie's "Halloween" and he does alright here in his limited role. Scout Taylor Compton has also been on the rise since "Halloween", even more than Mane. The reason is not entirely clear to me. She is a decent actress (I enjoyed her in "Wicked Little Things") and a growing icon, but of all the actresses, she seems to get the strongest following at the conventions... odd. But seriously -- just kids trapped in a sauna. Is it scary to slowly cook to death? Certainly. But is it entertaining to watch for 90 minutes? Not really. This could have been 60 minutes or even 30 -- a good episode of a television show, but a bit too simple for a full-length film.

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• Kids go on relaxing weekend at a cabin. Drunken argument leads to danger. Kids stuck in sauna...we watch them sweat..wow. I say C-

  cosmo_tiger2012-10-16

  "I want to go its hot. I want to get out of here." When a group of friends decide to get away for a weekend at an uncle's cabin they think they will have fun and relax. The night of a party the friends choose to sit in a sauna for a few minutes before leaving. A drunken argument turns dangerous and three of the friends are locked in the hot sauna with the odds of them getting out getting slimmer with every temperature change. I have to admit that the plot seemed a little weak to me going in but after watching ATM I decided to give it a chance. After watching this I have to say I should have stuck with my original theory. The movie had little development and when they got to the sauna it seemed to stop and is was about an hour of screaming, crying and repeating the same thing over and over. A few scenes at the end got a little cheesy but this movie is geared toward older teens and for that it does work. This is not my type of movie but I'm sure there are some that will love it. Overall, a very weak movie that seemed to have no point. I give it a C-.

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• A movie to give your head some R and R but with a few problems

  tomgib2012-11-18

  This is not really a bad flick, and I can recommend it to anyone whose brain is in a rut and in need of 90 minutes of R and R. It is a lot like the Open Water movies except it involves fire instead of water. Three people are trapped in a sauna in a remote cabin when their friend staggers away, drunk and high, and passes out without realizing that he has left a ladder wedged against the door. There follows various unsuccessful attempts to escape and to call for help. I usually like to guess what people in such a movie will try next, whether some such attempt will eventually work, and whether the attempts and results make any sense. This one did give me something to think about, but I do not think it passed the sense test. The problem is they have broken a small window for air, not a bad idea. But the window is located near the sensor for the thermostat which interprets the incoming air as too low a temperature. So it cranks the heat up high enough to threaten them with heat stroke. Fooling a thermostat can be a problem. In an office building where I used to work, the thermostat in a naturally cool office once cranked the heat up enough to trip the fire alarm in another office on the same thermostat. But I think this movie had problems. Why didn't they use the towels that they had to pick up one or more of the hot rocks in the heater and hang or hold it near the temperature sensor? That should have fooled the thermostat in the opposite direction and tended to shut down the heat. I'm not sure what equilibrium temperature the room would have reached, but it should have been a lot cooler with the heater shut down most of the time. Also I don't think it likely that incoming air would have cooled the sensor without reaching the rest of the room. In fact, it seems more likely that heat would have escaped through that broken window. But this flick had compensations. Friends making such an earnest effort to understand, survive, and escape trouble can make a movie interesting. One character, Jenna, had been trapped before and was fighting the after effects while her friend, Renee, seemed at first to have it together. As the situation progresses, they switch roles as Renee comes apart while Jenna tries to get it together. Such things are hardly new in movies, but they can raise the interest level, and it was nicely done here. Also I am getting tired of movies (and here comes a major spoiler) that seem to exist just to gradually kill off the whole cast, one by one. This was a nice exception as it threatened that sort of ending right up to very late in the movie, when we find that …… well, you get the idea.

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• Uncreative, one-dimensional

  dfranzen702012-10-18

  247°F is as straightforward a horror movie as you'll ever see. It's uninventive and feels like a giant missed opportunity. In fact, as the movie wears on (and on) one starts to believe that there's Something behind our protagonists' troubles - but alas, if there is, it's trivial. Most of the movie is set in a homemade sauna. Jenna, her friend Renee, Renee's boyfriend Michael, and Michael's friend Ian have zipped over to a remote island to stay in Ian's uncle's cabin for the weekend. Concurrently, it is the weekend of the May Day celebrations, apparently a big deal in the nearby towns, and Wade the uncle is involved with the setup of the festivities. We learn a few things about our main characters right away. Jenna, meant to be the protagonist, is anxious, shy, withdrawn; flashbacks show us (in the first scenes) that her fiancé' was killed in an auto accident (with Jenna beside him), and she hasn't yet fully recovered. Friend Renee is outgoing, outspoken, caring about her pal and wanting to get her out of her self-imposed shell. Michael is the typical Type A frat boy - controlling, fun loving even at the expense of others. Ian, by contrast, is sedate, passionate, thoughtful, and well spoken; weird, because he looks like the lost Winklevoss twin. The plan is for the foursome to go to this May Day pre-party, so while ol' Uncle Wade goes to set up, they head into his sauna. Then it gets too hot, so they jump in the lake. Then it's too cold, so back to the sauna. This goes on for a while. The entire time, Michael's drinking everything in sight, so you can see where this is headed. They go back to the sauna, he leaves to use the bathroom, and somehow the door gets stuck with the other three inside. The point is to see how each will react to the extreme (and rising) heat, making it less a horror film and more of a psychological freak- out. Someone's going to crack - no surprise or spoiler that it's Renee, who's painted from the get-go as more selfish than most. Ian is determined to get them all out of there - he's played pretty well by Travis Van Winkle - and Jenna just tries to get by. They all assume Michael locked them in as a prank, but after a while the story switches to his passing out and just leaving them in there. The movie could have gone in several directions. I kept expecting a twist; none came. This would have made for a predictable film, but since I naively kept thinking there was more to the story than met the eye, I didn't allow myself to become jaded. The acting is acceptable. In addition to Van Winkle, we have the redoubtable Scout Taylor-Compton (Halloween) as the high-strung Jenna turning in a wonderful performance. But they have little to work with. People do behave as you'd expect, only in the case of some (Renee, Michael), it's more of a case of melodrama than acting. Tears are shed, as is some blood. Because the movie lacks so much in substance and creativity, it's not an easily recommendable film. You have to be prepared for a lot of nothing much happening. After all, there's only so much you can do in a sauna without getting into deep psychological trauma, and the movie - although it had the opportunity - barely scratched the surface of everyone's problems. We know Jenna has issues and why, but we're unclear on how she deals with it. Would have been nice to see better character development - what does she fear now? Same for Renee; even her love for Jenna seems self serving. They've been friends forever, and Renee has an extroverted, love-life personality. Does she have demons? And does Ian do anything other than say just the right thing and be just the nicest guy ever? Who knows? Stories like this have been done to death in movies - trapped in an elevator, trapped in a mine shaft, trapped on a boat, and so on. They succeed because the plot involves you with the characters. Do we really care about the state of the relationship between Renee and Jenna? Not really, because the movie gives us no reason to do so. We like Jenna, we don't like Renee too much, and we're quite ambivalent over their long-time friendship.

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