Culture’d Clash: There’s trouble in ‘…STORAGE’…
It’s 1979 and the Skylab space station is falling out of orbit. Sure, the military and government think that they’ve contained the situation and there’s no apparent loss of life, but it seems that one piece, crash-landing in the Australian outback, may not have come back alone. A strange fungus-like organism has come with it and by the time contact is lost with the nearest town, the small-unit dispatched finds only an assortment of corpses.
The military is quick to contain the situation, burying the organism deep inside an unlisted part of a military facility in Kansas, avoiding a near cataclysmic event and saving humanity. However, the lack of direct paperwork means that few people understand the dangers that may still exist deep under the ground and over the decades, the facility becomes a side-thought for the government, eventually sold-off and becoming a private storage facility.
But the alien organism has been growing, trying to find its way to the surface and tonight, IN 2026, two lowly night-shift workers, their duplicitous boss, a gang of criminals and two rogue government agents are all that stand between a fatal alien outbreak…
*some spoilers*
Directed by Jonny Campbell, whom you’re unlikely to remember for steering 2006’s Alien Autopsy (a vehicle for British entertainers/presenters Ant and Dec that was barely road-worthy) Cold Storage is a film that starts well enough, with some genuinely unnerving moments surrounding an Outback outbreak in town where all the now deceased townsfolk appear to have succumbed to a condition that makes them explode from the inside. If it feels like we’re heading into The Andromeda Strain territory, it’s momentary. Tonally, it’s ultimately somewhere between Men in Black, Attack the Block and Tremors, but not as good, yet Cold Storage basically feels like it’s never quite sure what it wants to be. If pushed and stirred, this is more like cult classic The Stuff. Yes, there’s some very effective tension as the three bio-hazard agents assigned to the investigation realise the danger they’re in, but then – phew – it’s done. Except it’s not and it’s now a quarter of a century later and we’re about to get goofy and gunky.
Here, David Koepp’s adapts the screenplay from his 2019 novel, seeding enough technical and true scientific terms to make it feel like some diligence has been done, but – again – this isn’t remotely to top-level sf, certainly not in the same ballpark as Peter Weir’s The Martian or even Project Hail Mary and there’s only enough latent-technobabble to act as decoration for an otherwise loose and inconsistent tale that’s more a B-movie than an A+ thesis. This isn’t trying to be Shakespeare or Oscar-bait and it goes for the obvious pratfall laughs and the high-concepts more than being biologically-viable but with a story that feels like it needs at least another draft to tighten things up or choose a singular direction.
There are knowing references. The organism seems to initially have some speeded-up similarities to the real-life cordyceps fungus that became so key in The Last of Us and while a cursory reference to a Rat King may have its origins in the entangled mice of sixteenth century legend, it also feels like another reference to a boss-level threat in that apocalyptic PS5 game and HBO adaptation. Culture-wise, there’s more of an emphasis on the ‘pop’ variety rather than the biological term and there’s little to be learned of the organism’s motives other than propagation and survival. Sometimes it moves slowly (it take decades to reach the surface) yet slinks along at a fair pace when it gets top-side. Early-on there’s mention of it heading as high as it can (the Australian dead all climbed on roofs) but other than some innate urge to return to the stars, that aspect is ignored in favour of ‘I want vomit in your mouth…‘ dialogue.
The surprisingly strong cast-list suggests more than you’ll get. Joe Keery, coming off the massive success of Stranger Things, stays in pseudo-horror territory, though it’s a turn with tongue in cheek. He and fellow co-worker Georgina Campbell (Barbarian) are essentially the lowly Clerks-like night-workers around which the take pivots as the ill-advisedly explore the discarded corridors in the military-compound-turned-storage-unit. They shoulder the lifting duties well enough. The likes of previous Oscar-winners Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville go through the motions, clearly enjoying a project that doesn’t take itself seriously. But if Manville really doesn’t have much to do but book-end the story, it’s the likes of industry-great Vanessa Redgrave who is far more wasted, appearing only in a couple of scenes. It suggests that these veterans either have far more on the cutting room floor or are appearing as a favour.
Cold Storage is engaging if rather undemanding fun – a perfectly enjoyable romp that really doesn’t bear up to a lot of scrutiny or logic but rattles along at a quick enough pace that will make you go ewwwww and iccccck in just the right amounts. There’s moments that work (the promising opening, a surreal scene of an infected deer waiting for an elevator that is just creepy and quirky enough to be unnerving), but ultimately there’s just too many moving parts and characters for it to work as well as it might and the true frustration is that you can occasionally see the superior anarchic tale this could have been before it slithers away.
7.5/10
Cold Storage is now available on available on Digital HD from Amazon Video and iTunes and on DVD/blu-ray from StudioCanal, released this week in the US and 11th May in the UK…