Room Temperature

Room Temperature

Room Temperature transforms a family tradition into an unsettling examination of obsession, control and the private fantasies people impose upon those closest to them. Every Halloween, a family living amid the barren sprawl of the California desert turns its home into an elaborate DIY haunted-house attraction for the neighborhood. What once functioned as a shared family project, however, has gradually become the father's consuming personal vision, with the rest of the household increasingly expected to participate in a fantasy that belongs primarily to him. Experimental queer filmmakers Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley (Permanent Green Light, Like Cattle Towards Glow) approach this unusual domestic ritual with a mixture of deadpan humor, discomfort and creeping unease. Rather than functioning as a conventional haunted-house horror film, Room Temperature uses the construction and performance of the attraction as the framework for a slow, strange meditation on family dynamics, creative obsession, longing and control while blurring the boundary between playful theatricality and something considerably more disturbing.