SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The film is about 70 minutes long with an additional 7 minutes of end credits. It is based on an H.P. Lovecraft book which immediately put it on my must see list. I was very disappointed. The film starts out with a blurb about the Weret Hekau, a story which stays on the screen too long so as to add time to the production.The film opens, ends, and is filled with first person narration by Charles Baxter (Morgan Weisser) a wannabe screen writer with writer's block. He is renting a room in a secluded house which includes two other guests who live private lives, the most intriguing is Dr. Shockner (Crystal Laws Green) who lives in a cool room in the upstairs, even though basements are easier to keep cool.The narration was a boring monotone which caused me to nod off from time to time. Cynthia Curnan took an interesting book and shredded it. No horror or suspense. No intensity. The initial meeting of Baxter and Shockner was equally long and boring as we see a prolonged picture of his face while we hear their monotone voices. Jenny Dare Paulin provides the token eye candy as Estella, a slightly autistic woman.The low budget aspect didn't allow for much more than someone telling a story. This apparently is a 2006 film re-released.Parental Guide: No f-bombs, sex, or nudity. What did I do with my "Re-Animater" DVD?

Lovecraft's original story is only about nine pages. This movie pads it out into a hour and half of boredom, unnecessary characters and a gender switch of the protagonist. (Lovecraft had almost no female characters in his stories.) It looks like everyone involved in this film was related, and it kind of looks like one of those awful fan films you see on YouTube without the good CGI. Of course, the movie is made a bit worse by the fact that we know now that "Science doesn't work like that", and they try to add a supernatural element that Lovecraft didn't bother with. (Supernatural elements and C'Thulhu being in his future.) We also see creepy scenes of a narrator hitting on an an autistic girl. The dialog is just dreadful when they try to add onto Lovecraft's original narrative.

The movie has flaws, some bigger than others, but in the end it is a decent, well acted, well written adaptation of Lovecraft's short story with the same name.If you know Lovecraft you know how difficult it is to transform his writing into film. The 2006 adaptation does this well by translating 1923's New York to an isolated place close to L.A. in the 2000s, Dr. Munoz to a woman and adding more characters. I expected poor acting from the mainly unknown cast, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that they all did a very good job.Unfortunately, this could not really fill the entire length of a full movie so that film feels unbearably drawn out. This could have been a really enjoyable 40 minute short, but instead it lasts for one hour and seventeen minutes of narrating slowly and the same melody playing incessantly in the background.Bottom line: a decent adaptation of a Lovecraftian short story that is not related to the Chtulhu mythos. The element of romantic tension and the various characters that were added were refreshing and enhanced the story. Everybody played well and it felt like a filmed play. Unfortunately the movie suffers from terrible pacing and it would have benefited from a shorter cut.

. . . H.P. Lovecraft's short story "Cool Air" is totally plagiarized from Edgar Allan Poe's tale entitled "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar." Lacking the budget for period costumes, this 2006 Picturization of COOL AIR brings the yarn to the present and pads it out with every trick known to Cinemakind. Allegedly clocking in at "78 minutes," that already puny length includes a drawn-out 6 minutes, 13 seconds of opening credits and a snail's crawling 7 minutes, 41 seconds of closing credits. When you subtract 13 minutes, 54 seconds of credits from a 77-minute, 43-second running time, you're left with a mere 63 minutes, 49 seconds of movie. This is bad enough, but every shot in this film seems to be repeated ten times, with most of the dialog echoed again and again. A skilled editor easily could condense what's presented in the way of a story here to ten minutes or less. For viewers who NEED something about 80 minutes long as a sleep aid, I'd suggest skipping COOL AIR. Get one of those burning yule log DVD's instead. This will provide a better plot, superior special effects, and more natural acting than does COOL AIR. Plus, you'll probably sleep better!