Cold Storage Review

This passing week has saw the release of some of the biggest films in the year already, from Gore Verbinski’s new blockbuster adventure feature, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, to the controversial new adaptation of Wuthering Heights from Saltburn-director Emerald Fennell. However, it also saw the release of a contained and smaller feature that harkens back to the old creature-feature mid-budget movies of the past, and that would be Cold Storage. Starring Stranger Things breakout Joe Keery and Barbarian star Georgina Campbell, alongside the well-known Liam Neeson, the film is based on a book of the same name, written by David Koepp, the screenwriter behind such classics as Jurassic Park and Mission Impossible. Koepp would return to write the screenplay for the film adaptation, which skews very closely to his original text, with that former text feeling like a proof-of-concept for a film anyway. The film follows Keery and Campbell as disgruntled workers at a storage industry building, who meet on the same nightshift as they discover the building has been built on the remains of an old military base. The base holds a parasitic fungus, as the duo attempts to contain it and with the help of a military officer, played by Neeson, who has had a past with the fungus, destroy it as well.

There is something inherently charming about Cold Storage, a very contained body-horror thriller, contained to one single location, and developing enough interesting sequences in such a contained location. The film screams low budget, with the director being someone who has gained prominence from documentaries, and some one-episode stints on TV. In this day and age, when the cinema experience seems to be designed for big-budget blockbusters, it is incredible to see such a entertaining and smaller-scale feature, that in this day would end up being sent straight to TV or be thrown on a streaming service like Netflix. There have been many contagion-style films, or zombie apocalypse scenarios, and even the concept of this coming from a fungus is not original, the game and television series The Last Of Us done that first, but homage seems to be the focus of this film. It feels spiritually like a Romero-film, or like it is homaging Shaun of the Dead, a horror-comedy that uses the tropes of the genre to have fun and designed to be enjoyable without any major thought into the plot.

That is not to say that the movie is perfect however, as mentioned before, the plot is not where you are coming for, it is essentially a loose connection of fun sequences that are tied together by a string that will crash and burn at any moment. The central plot-thread of the American military leaving one of their decommissioned military bases that holds a world-ending fungus is laughable, especially when the fungus is shown to have been spreading through the base before the military left and no one noticed. The fungus also works in such a way that if you removed yourself from the harmless and fun vibes of the feature, you would question why it breaks its own rules consistently. Sometimes the fungus takes minutes to infect a host, sometimes it takes longer, and the amount of time it takes to kill or bloat them into a fungus bomb varies based on where the plot is at that moment. In an impressively eerie opening sequence set in the initial finding of the fungus, the film sets up the fungus will move itself to meet the nearest host and can infect a host through their shoes when they stand on it. However, the film goes out of its way to make the fungus act irrationally to stop its main characters from being infected, even during a scene where a lead touches a padlock that was previously touched by an infected.

Speaking of those main characters, the performances of the main cast is where the film truly comes alive. Georgina Campbell has made a name for herself as a Scream-Queen in the last couple of years, from starring in Zach Cregger’s Barbarian, to her next film being the slasher, Psycho Killer, and she pulls in an engaging performance here. Joe Keery is another reliable actor, rising to fame because of his smaller role in Stranger Things, that soon led him to become a fan-favourite and become boosted to a major character. With that show over, his career can truly start, and he plays differently to his iconic Steve Harrington character here, taking on the role of a fast-talking delinquent with a level of charisma that can only come from Keery. His need to constantly talk can become irritating at some points, but it’s saved by the excellent chemistry between Keery and Campbell, they compliment each other well and the movie gives them enough emotional beats to offset how fast the action starts when they first meet.

Liam Neeson seems to be leaning more into his recent turn to comedy here, off the back of his The Naked Gun remake, with his side of the film being easily the most comedic based. He spends essentially the whole movie driving to the plot and serves as basically an exposition machine for the world-building of this fungus, but that exposition never feels tedious, because Neeson delivers it in such a serious way that you cannot help but find it hilarious. His section of the film feels like a completely different film at times, but when you get to the two plotlines overlapping, the small interactions you get between the central cast is very endearing.

Rated in the UK as a 15 as well, the film does enough with the body-horror angle of the fungus infection to make some memorable, and usually comedic in tone sequences with some great makeup effects, and some impressive visual effects for a movie so low-budget. Not all the effects are perfect, any time the movie includes an infected animal, namely a cat and a deer, the effects stand out incredibly hard, and make sequences which are meant to be frightening, into something incredibly comedic. There is an interesting choice throughout the film to include visual-effects heavy sequences where the camera follows the fungus into the body, showcasing it affecting the blood cells and taking over the body, and those sequences are some of the most frightening featured across the film, really bringing across the fear of the situation.

The effects really shine a light on how the film is, not perfect, but a great popcorn flick that Hollywood just does not make anymore. In another world, if it wasn’t for the Liam Neeson appearance and the fact its written by such a big screenwriter, this film would find a home on Netflix, or any of the other streaming services. It is important to appreciate good mid-budget features like this on the big screen, and there is enough fun to be had here to make any horror fan have a good time. It is not the most original film in the world, but its influences it wears earnestly, and three great central performances allow it to become a compelling zombie flick that is worth the price of admission