247 Degrees Fahrenheit (2011)

Just perfect...

Admirable film.

A Major Disappointment

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

This is the type of movie that you can easily decide whether or not it is worth your time. The plot says it all. Stuck in a sauna..why are they stuck and what will happen to the people? Nothing more, nothing less. If this plot sounds cool to you (which it did to me as a fan of Open Water, Buried, Frozen, etc), then you will enjoy the movie. Period. Good acting, likable characters, etc. If a movie can leave a lasting impression on me, it worked. I will always be reminded of this movie any time I see or go into a sauna. Not that I frequent saunas, but you get the idea. This doesn't mean it was a great movie. It wasn't. But it was definitely above average. Scout Taylor Compton is a legit face in horror now so I enjoyed seeing her. I give it an 7/10 (horror movie scale) but I'm bumping it to an 8 just to offset some negative reviews.

I had two questions on my mind when popping 247°F into the DVD player: 'How the hell are they going to make being stuck in a sauna engrossing for an entire film?', and 'Will Scout Taylor-Compton be as annoying as she was in Halloween II, April Fool's Day and Wicked Little Things?'. Well, the answers are 'They didn't' and 'Yes'.The 'trapped in one place' scenario has proved effective in the past with films like Frozen and Adrift, wherein a small group of individuals find themselves unexpectedly caught in a hopeless situation with survival looking increasingly unlikely as times passes; but where those films featured a variety of perils—extreme weather conditions, ravenous animals, life-threatening injuries—247°F 's only threat is sweltering heat. While that is certainly something to be concerned about, it doesn't exactly make for great entertainment, and with such an unlikeable bunch of characters, it's hard for the viewer to care less what happens to them.Taylor-Compton is as whiny and irritating as everything else I have seen her in; she does, however, seem to have her devoted fans, and I can imagine that it is only they who will find anything remotely of interest in this film, the sight of their favourite actress sweating away in her undies being something they can get all hot and bothered about again and again in the privacy of their own darkened rooms.3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

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.

I despise the heat with a passion. I'd rather be under certain acts of torture than be exposed to long term heat. Unfortunately, the characters in 247°F do not have a choice. They become trapped in a sauna, deflated by excruciatingly intolerable heat while they are left to fry and have their skin sweat to disintegration. We're approaching winter in Chicago and in certain sequences I felt like I was drowning in my own sweat and exhaustion watching this film.The story centers on four college kids who venture out to a remote cabin owned by one of the kids' uncles who has graciously allowed them to spend the night there after they return home from a late night party. The kids are nervous Jenna (Scout Taylor-Compton), straight-laced Ian (Travis Van Winkle), obnoxious Michael (Michael Copon), and bitchy Renee (Christina Ulloa), and the cabin owner is Ian's uncle Wade (Tyler Mane), who also offers up his man-made sauna in his backyard. The teens immediately decide to spend some of the evening jumping from the sauna to the lake, then back to the sauna.Then, as party time approaches, Michael becomes drunk and bothers his long-suffering girlfriend Renee, leading to her, Jenna, and Ian staying in the sauna while Michael lumbers around drunk outside. Suddenly, an abrupt pang of something falling is heard in the air, and the next thing the three know, they can't get out of the sauna because the giant wooden door is stuck. The homeowner is gone, Michael is passed out drunk, and no one is nearby to help the unfortunate teenagers. At first, it's almost a unanimous consensus that this mishap is a cruel joke by Michael, but as time goes by and the sauna temperature sits uncomfortably at 184°F, they begin to rationalize that Michael could not be this sadistic to stretch out a joke for this long.Considering the fact that claustrophobic films are difficult to accomplish and more difficult to even find in a market dominated by "the-next-big-thing." 247°F is perhaps the best movie about a group of friends being trapped in a sauna increasing in temperature that could be made. It's unfortunate that the characters are rather underwritten, but it is quite a blessing that their actions once locked in the sauna are sensible and believable. They seem to consider options and consequences of their actions more seriously rather than impulsively breaking things and spewing senseless chatter. Although the characters do often yell, it seems to be more fitting because they are hot, exhausted, and noticeably drained of their energy.One could view 247°F as an eighty-eight minute continuation of the infamous tanning bed scene in Final Destination 3, as we watch these three characters helplessly fry, unsure of how to respond. The film's strength is in character-subtleties, but its shortcomings are in dialog and development. It pales in comparison to genre greats like Frozen and Open Water, yet it satisfies someone who religiously seeks out these films, no matter what contraption the characters are stuck in rather it's an isolated ATM kiosk, a ski-lift chair, or an elevator. Claustrophobic films are especially difficult films to make because they requires character dialog and human interest. I return to the idea that this is probably the most accomplished film about characters being locked in a sauna that the public will ever see.Starring: Scout Taylor-Compton, Travis Van Winkle, Christina Ulloa, Michael Copon, and Tyler Mane. Directed by: Levan Bakhia and Beqa Jguburia.