The 32nd Chicago Underground Film Festival, Day One: “Room Temperature” Channels Halloween Early with Haunted Vibes and Deadpan Comedy, The Night Ends with Drinks at Broken Shaker

The 32nd rendition of CUFF kicks off five days of films and afterparties with a slow-paced haunted house experimental film with deadpan comedy.

The Chicago Underground Film Festival comes back for its 32nd year, kicking off with the experimental horror "Room Temperature." The art of festival flyer comes from the likes of two artists, Alex Scott and Isabel Overby.

As the winds of fall slowly find their footing in Chicago, lovers of independent film gather at the Gene Siskel Film Center for the first night of this year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival. 

Theater 1 is packed to the rim as Bryan Wendor gives an introduction to “Room Temperature,” the opening film of this year’s festival, as well as a speech on the festival itself. Vendor’s speech celebrates CUFF’s 32 years and highlights the team and sponsors that helped make it happen. 

Finishing his speech, the lights finally go out and the opening film finally plays — following a couple of minutes of showing all of the sponsors.

“Room Temperature” serves as the brainchild of Zac Farley and Dennis Cooper. The film follows a school janitor who stumbles upon a haunted house hosted by a family. Due to this run-in, the janitor, played by Chris Olsen, finds himself part of the family-run theatrical haunted house.

It becomes clear that the family follows along with the father’s obsessive fantasy and storytelling. The obsession gets to the point where the father kills his son’s friend, a French kid named “Extra,” in an attempt to add to the haunted house’s story. 

The film’s slow-pace comes through in a couple of aspects, namely its deadpan comedy. In the second scene of the film, we see the janitor cleaning the school bathroom and a woman, presumably a teacher or administrative worker at the school, walks in and asks: “Do you think the kids look up to you?”

He takes a moment before answering, noting that the kids don’t either look up or down to him. Rather, they look at him sideways at a slightly downward angle. His slow, deadpan answer elicited laughter from the crowd and set the tone for the rest of the film.

The slow-pace of the film comes through in the camera setup as it’s similar to that of a sitcom. The camera would stay in one place and it typically didn’t move throughout the scene. If there needed to be movement in the scene, there would be a cut instead of moving the camera itself. 

Though, there were times where the camera itself moved. When the janitor first stumbled upon the house, you saw him walk up to the house. The camera then slowly panned to another woman walking up to the house. She ultimately walked away, and the camera continued to pan back to the house with the janitor standing at the edge of the property.

The process of panning the camera took up to a minute or two, and one could say it gave another meaning to “deadpan.”

There were a few moments where the camera appeared to be flying, almost as if it were a drone camera. This came after the death of “Extra” and it was used to float through the walls of the house and tents that the family slept in outside the home. The camerawork makes one feel like a ghost, one that’s also part of the haunted house.

“Room Temperature” serves as a slow-paced twist on the horror genre as it tackles the complicated dynamic of family while presenting comedy in unexpected moments. 

Following the film’s screening, the audience gives a rightful applause and the filmmaking duo behind the film take to the stage for a Q&A session.

Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley did not come from the film arena, as Cooper serves as an underground novelist, known for his book “The Sluts,”  and Farley is a visual artist who studied fine arts at California Institute of the Arts and Northwestern University. The duo previously worked together on two films, “Permanent Green Light” and “Like Cattle Towards Glow.”

During the Q&A session, Cooper notes that he took years to learn how to become a novelist, taking time to hone his craft before releasing any books. Tony O’Neill, an author and journalist, described Cooper as “a master of transgressive literature featuring all manner of minutely-observed depravity,” in a 2007 article for The Guardian. 

A Salon article, published at the turn of the millennium, described Cooper as a “dangerous writer, both for the pedestrian reader unable to get beyond surface, and for those who like their homosexual literary aesthetics cozily free of anything resembling depth or complexity.”

Both articles quoted William Borroughs, another author, who once said:

“Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.”

Zac Farley, currently living in France, later answered a question about the film’s frame rate. “Room Temperature” was filmed at 25 frames per second, which is different from the 24 frames per second norm. He notes that 25 fps is how many films in France are filmed, so it was a second nature type of decision rather than a conscious one. 

As the Q&A session draws to the end, film enthusiasts and filmmakers file out of the theater — some gathering in the Gene Siskel Film Center lobby while others gather directly outside on State Street. 

Eventually, folks find themselves to Broken Shaker on Ohio Street in the River North neighborhood. Socializing over free sponsored cans of Heineken took over the night as people wind down for the night. 

The festival continues with more screenings throughout the weekend, notably “Tripolar The Movie” and “The Secret Lives of Bill Bartell.” Day Two starts with an art installation at Connect Gallery, dubbed “Palace of Machinery.” The installation serves as a multi-screen reanimation of 20th-century films. Two artists, Jenny Boles and Stephan Moore, will have their work featured in the installation.