Macabre...ish Horror Review: 200 Degrees

 

 

200 Degrees, 2017/ 91 min.

A man, Ryan (Eric Balfour), wakes up, zip tied to a chair, inside a metal chamber with heat lamps on the ceiling and temperature gauge and clock on the wall. His phone rings and a man on the line, a friend of his, Bruce, says he’s locked in the same kind of room, he tells him that someone is demanding one million dollars. He remembers being kidnapped from his hotel room and claims he’s being cooked alive. The call ends.


Another man’s voice is heard, he has questions and Ryan Hinds has one chance to answer them. If he guesses correctly he gets to walk free. Two minutes. If he guesses wrong, the heat lamps over head, come on. If he doesn’t comply, the lamps come on.


The man then demands one million dollars of Ryan’s money, he has 2 hours and for every 5 minutes he waits, the room increases by 3 degrees and the room is already at 100 degrees. But Ryan doesn’t have anywhere near that kind of money but he has a cell phone and he needs to get it.


And the voice, knows everything about him and his family. Including his secrets. The only way out of this is with that phone.

This is a small budget indie, small cast and takes place in mostly one room plus flashbacks. The concept is a good one and I love Eric Balfour, he does a great job, considering...the movie starts out strong but is pretty weak by the end. I really like the idea of it but it’s not great.

We end up watching a guy essentially making high pressure sales calls for about an hour, until ‘the voice’ starts playing head games with him. Until that unfortunate ending.

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