Room Temperature
Director(s): Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley
Film description: One night every year a family transforms their home and yard into a haunted house and invites their neighbors to walk through it. What used to be a group effort has increasingly become the dad’s obsessive fantasy that his family is expected to enact.
Screening after: The Idea
TOBER SAYS Fans of offbeat indie comedy and slow-horror atmospherics will find common ground in another visually striking achievement from Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley. In this suspenseful mood piece, no scene is left safe from the creeping suspicion that anything could happen. Shot in chilling blues and sun-drenched yellows, it’s an experience of the southwestern suburban landscape that rightfully captures both its beauty and its terror. (Tober Corrigan)
Expected to travel from Paris to attend New/Next are both Dennis Cooper, author of acclaimed transgressive novels such as Frisk and God Jr., and Zac Farley, with whom Cooper has directed 2015’s Like Cattle Towards Glow and 2018’s Permanent Green Light—the latter picked by John Waters as one of the best films of its year. We’ve paired Room Temperature with a short film adapted from a Raymond Carver short story for a program of dark Americana excellence with firm literary roots.
Writer(s): Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley
Producer(s): Nicolas Breviere (Local Films), Luka Fisher, Charles De Meaux (Anna Sanders Films), Marcus Chang, Cara Braglia, Octo Productions/Stefan Kalmar & Raoul Klooker
Editor(s): Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley
Cinematographer(s): Yaroslav Golovkin
Country of origin: USA
Principal cast: Charlie Nelson Jacobs, John Williams, Chris Olsen, Ange Dargent, Stanya Kahn, Virginia Adams
Language: English
Year: 2025
Duration: 92 min
Premiere status: Maryland Premiere
