In the desert of southern California, every year a family dutifully works to convert their prefabricated home into a haunted house spectacle for neighbors to explore. But as the mundane slowly gives way to the macabre, the family's own personal problems are laid bare as the father's infatuation increasingly begins to take its toll on everyone.

Room Temperature marks the third feature-film collaboration between the iconic cult writer Dennis Cooper and visual artist Zac Farley, offering up a uniquely uncanny and distressing portrait of American life. Though often abrupt and unpredictable in its tonal shifts, Room Temperature's twists are always measured and meticulous, aided by Cooper and Farley's wonderful troupe of non-professional actors who imbue their characters with a mix of drollness and poignance. As the haunted house comes to completion, the film beautifully captures the eddy of swirling ineffable emotions surrounding it, along with the undercurrent of dread bubbling just below the surface.