"247°F" - - Open Water 3: Closed Steam

Here's a little Hollywood breakdown for you:

Based On A True Story: This means that the film you are about to see is based off someone's life experinces. Generally, they have sold the rights of their story to the production company and then take a back seat. Many times, like in "Goodfellas," actual events and people may be truncated to allow the story to be told in 2 hours. Films that say "Based On A True Story" may not be entirely true in the purest sense, but they are at least true to the person who sold the rights since it is their point of view.

Inspired By True Events: This means someone once read an article or overheard something and turned it into a movie. "Open Water" is the best example of this. Sure, people have gotten left behind during scuba trips. And yes, that is tragic. But the actual events of the movie are pretty much made up. Using the logic of "Inspired By True Events," you could take the story of a missing kid that gets teleported into the future and say "hey, who knows. The true part is kid's go missing."

And finally we have the fence-straddling "Based On True Events" which is what "247°F" bills itself as. This means that what you are about to see is probably not true but closer to the truth than a regular movie." Of course, any time I see a claim of "true" on a movie I have to check IMDB right away to see how close to the truth it is. It's actually pretty distracting and really doesn't add anything to the movie. But I digress.





"247°F" is about 3 people stuck in a sauna. There is a bit of a mystery as to if someone stuck them in the sauna, but not really. The movie tries to portray the groundskeeper as a shady character but halfway through the movie he's shooting off fireworks. Ok. There's also another friend who storms out of the sauna right before they get stuck and for awhile it is played up that maybe he locked them in there. Then the movie tries to convince us that the friend is working with the groundskeeper, but no, the friend shows up and watches the groundskeeper shoot off fireworks. Why any of this is in the movie besides fake tension and building up the running time is a puzzle for the ages.

When we aren't being treated to, admittedly impressive, firework displays, we cut back to the sauna and watch people sweat. Sweat and yell. Yell and sweat. For about 30 minutes.

Then the guy thinks "Maybe the lights are connected to the thermostat control and if we short circuit the lights . . ."

One electrocution later, the remainder of the movie takes place in the dark. Why? Why would the director choose to destroy his only light source? From then on out we only see sweaty faces and nothing else. The lighting was so bad I actually thought, and I might be right, that the guy has sex with a furnace. I don't know for sure but eventually he rips it out of the ground and then he's dead. I can't tell if he's burnt or blown up because I can't see! But he's dead.

Eventually the fireworks end and the friend goes back home and rescues them oh wait, no, he gets stoned and falls asleep. And since the guy in the sauna raped the furnace off it's base there is now a natural gas leak (?) and the two remaining girls can't breathe. Finally, the groundkeeper comes in and is like, "Holy shit!" and they get rescued the end. The acting actually wasn't that bad but once they start screaming, it's a little hard to care. And once you can't see who is screaming what, this movie becomes a Herculean trial to sit through.

Eh. Fair enough. I expected a little more tension, and a lot more light, but whatever. So now it's over to IMDB to find out just how "true" this story was:

From the Trivia page:

"The true event that the movie is based on happened in Georgia, where this film is made and filmmakers are from. 4 friends were in the sauna, one left for the toilet, locking his friends in - exactly as it is shown in the movie. He never came back, and when he woke up he didn't remember that he left them in the sauna, and started to search for them elsewhere. Fortunately no one died since they managed to turn the heater off, but they had to spend over 10 hours in the decreasing heat, until they were found."

Wait, what? So no one died? No one had sex with a furnace filled with red hot rocks? They managed to turn the heater off? What a rip-off! Basically, the movie is based on the real life exploits of three sweaty people and their 10 hour odyssey in a presumably well lit sauna. So what was the point of all of this? When you watch "Open Water" it's chilling because you know people do get left behind. But after learning that nobody died in the "decreasing heat," I have to wonder who heard that story and thought, "I'm going to turn this into a film, and you know what this story is missing . . .fireworks!"

So what's the only cure for a movie as bad as "247°F" . . .