200 Degrees (2017)

After a brief flirtation with serious pop cultural critique, I'm back to reviewing the horror movie rubbish that no one else has seen (and for good reason). What better way to settle into that niche than to watch one of the many hundreds of Saw copycats on the market? It's my own personal white noise. Saw itself is one of the most problematic and ideologically iffy film franchises around with one of the best first movies, and I'm unapologetically hyped for the next movie to come out. The ripoffs, however, are...something. 

In my time watching blatant Saw ripoffs, I have seen some utter garbage. Even I, the most dedicated terrible movie watcher, could not sit through the monotony and bad acting of 2011's Vile. I struggled through 2006 Thai thriller 13 Beloved, even when it made me near gag, or 2014's Circle, even though I nearly fell asleep. Over time, I've enjoyed the occasional movie in this specific set up: I didn't mind the divisive Would You Rather, and this avenue is how I discovered the wicked fun that is Cube (the Saw precursor). 200 Degrees is one of the more blatant of the bunch, but it mixes in other concepts that have apparently already been done - a quick google found a movie called 247°F, and it's basically the Ryan Reynolds' vehicle Buried except he's locked in a big ol' oven instead of buried alive. Still, I watched it, because you are what you watch, and I am garbage. 

Most of this movie features one actor, Eric Balfour, and it's actually a good thing because he is the one person in this movie who can act. Everyone else in this movie, who features mostly via phone call or in the one climactic scene, seems to have never acted before in their lives. His character wakes up in aforementioned big ol' oven to a distorted voice over the speakers that seems to even use the same voice filter as the Jigsaw killers. The voice tells him that the temperature will gradually rise until the man carries out his requests. It's pretty straightforward.

In fact, this entire movie is pretty straightforward. Until the final two scenes, the stakes feel lower than they should be and the pacing is atrocious and the whole thing is poorly executed. It's an extended montage of Balfour giving it his all, but all he does is sweat and scream and, for twenty uninterrupted minutes, talk on the phone trying to sell the idea of bulletproof glass. I nearly gave up on it, but the main character was so unlikeable and the prospect was so laughable that I could see how you might conceivably want to watch him burn alive. 

And then...the final act. In the last fifteen minutes of this movie, it forgets what it is. Suddenly, we are in a soap opera. The music changes. Five different revelations are made in the span of ten minutes. People shoot each other seemingly at random. The sound mixing gets completely botched so that it seems like Eric Balfour is the only actor speaking and everyone else's mouths are moving at different speeds to what they are saying. It's a competition of one-upmanship. Even the music takes a shift to dramatic soap opera music, at one point. It is absolutely hilarious. I'm not going to unravel the reveals here, but I attempted to explain it to a friend last night, and it was a winding journey.

No, it is not worth watching. If, by some weird form of circumstance you do get caught watching it and feel the life force leaving you, hold out for the end. That's the only thing that gives it any kind of value as a movie.

Rating: 2.5/10, and all of those points are from Balfour's performance alone, which is a man giving his all to an abysmal movie. It is a genius move if he wanted to make people think he was one of the greatest actors of our time, because seeing him next to the people he shares scenes with is an act of unintentional comedy.