Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 39 minutes, Director – Jonny Campbell
Naomi (Georgina Campbell) and Teacake (Joe Keery) are working the nightshift at an isolated storage facility when a long-contained deadly space fungus in the former government facility breaks loose.
As the site of an alien fungus’ deadly spread is blown-up by military forces, seen from a distance from escaping armed vehicles, The Beach Boys’ I Get Around plays. After a hint that the film may be leaning slightly more seriously than expected it’s a burst of lighter amusement as we see the fungus being locked away in an underground government facility, turned many years later into a storage company. Unfortunately, this burst isn’t a sign of things to come as we quickly turn back to a slightly wondering, not-as-fun-as-hoped sci-fi horror comedy.
Night shifters Naomi (Georgina Campbell) and Teacake (Joe Keery) investigate a strange beep in the walls of the storage building and quickly stumble across old, isolated rooms still housing the long-locked-off but now spreading deadly space fungus. Infecting those who come into contact with it and leading them to infect others as quickly as possible before killing them. It just so happens that the isolated building is particularly populated on this evening with customers (Vanessa Redgrave, slightly uncertain as to how she found herself in this film), the boss (Gavin Spokes) organising TVs to be smuggled from one locker and retired government agents (Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville) turning up to stop the familiar spread.
David Koepp’s screenplay, based on his novel of the same name, doesn’t quite have the tongue-in-cheek fun and energy that the film needs to see itself through. Early on we see Keery’s Teacake starting his shift by reading a copy of The Body Snatchers, but that’s about as far as things go in this regard. It quickly becomes apparent that the film is a bit too busy with one too many characters involved in the spread or trying to stop it when really it should be trying to focus on Campbell and Keery’s characters as much as possible, they have the most potential for fun but the busier the film gets the more it starts to feel distracted from them despite being our introduction and main lens into the unfolding events.
With more characters comes more opportunities for infection, but also more opportunity for repetition which the film particularly falls into in the second and third act as the spread takes its contained and not overly threatening course – it seems largely apparent who’s safe from the fact that they’re always kept a good few feet away from the fungus at any time. It all dampens the film which has potential to be a solidly entertaining flick, but stumbles into un-amusement, despite one or two mild chuckles, rather quickly. There’s little spark to the events at hand and it sometimes feels as if things are being held back, although perhaps more for budget reasons than anything else, from being properly propulsive. What we end up getting is something not entirely cold, but more lukewarm after having already tried to reheat elements. A shame for a film that could have been quite fun.
Not as fun as it has the potential to be, Cold Storage falters because it doesn’t have complete faith in its lead characters. Surrounding them by a series of repetitive events for the supporting cast which never fully manage to entertain.
Just A Little Bit Random 