247°F

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)

Seen worse.. This movie was ok but would of played better as a horror versus thriller,about friends that go away & get by unfortunate circumstances trapped in a sauna.

Could of worked better if it was a vacation gone wrong,with intruders or the cabin host.

The premise was interesting but eventually weared thin,as you just wanted to know do they live or die.. Roll credits! But it was typical,clichés & plot hole genre.

It was cast ok,acting average & cinematography low-quality.. This movie tried to come across higher-quality,but overall failed.

Is it worth seeing? Sure! Passes time a good popcorn flick,on a boring day.

As a devout Horror fan, I watch many films of all kinds and sub-genres, and try to make a point of experiencing as many different types as possible. More often than not, I find myself disagreeing with IMDb's reviews and ratings. However, when it comes to this film, I can easily understand why your usual spectator would be unhappy.

Many Horror films fail to achieve the full effect of their potential on account of failing to suspend disbelief, or in other words – even if the acting is phenomenal and the characters are realistic, human and lovable, the presented scenario is too "far from home", esoteric and fantastic to make the audience really relate and imagine themselves in the same situation (for instance, any vampire/zombie/monster film, most torture-porn and even most killer/slasher films). 247°F, on the other hand, suffers from the exact opposite problem – it describes a situation which feels way too ordinary, therefore not scary. Also, if seems very weird and unrealistic for things to escalate so drastically. I mean really – a guy knocks into a ladder, the ladder falls and blocks the door to the sauna while it's on full steam? What's next? World epidemic starting because someone drank milk which was 5 hours past the expiration date?

In a way, the film felt like it was too long, sometimes to the point of boredom. Way too much time spent watching the sauna people sweat to death. However, in a way – it was also too short. Especially with the build-up from the beginning. Having given that much room to Jenna's story, I feel the dialogues between her and Renee were too short, with some drastic out-of-place escalations.

However – I do consider one thing in particular to be sort of an Easter egg for us Horror fan, and therefor a consolation prize. Throughout the film, we see many aspects of the Teen/Slasher sub-genre. The banal rolls of the characters (drunken/stoner jerk, good guy, good girl (troubled) and good girl's hot best friend who's dating jerk) all feel only too familiar, and many of the shots are simply screaming for "psycho-killer emerges from behind-bush hiding and slashes gut". And yet, 247°F is not at all a Slasher. More like a disaster film with some Slasher elements. Not exactly Horror.

Having said that about the screenplay and direction, I think the acting was all it'd meant to be. Same can be said for the cinematography. Also, nice attempts to make the film as close as possible to a single- location-shooting film. I only wish the story would've been better and scarier.

All in all, I can't say I didn't enjoy the film, but I also can't fully recommend it. If you're a devout Horror fan – watch it for the above- mentioned Easter egg. If not – I'd say watch it in order to give it a chance, but I personally won't be telling my friends to watch it.

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.

"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-.