COLD STORAGE Review: Genre Hybrid Never Fully Commits

One of the hottest stars in the industry today stars in a genre-blending creature feature from the screenwriter of Jurassic Park and the producer of Zombieland.

 

Throw in action movie veteran Liam Neeson, the star of Barbarian, and the director of Netflix’s acclaimed Dracula series and you have a film filled to the brim with all the ingredients for a fun horror-comedy romp.

 

While Cold Storage doesn’t quite live up to expectations established by the talent operating in front of and behind the camera, the new movie possesses just enough charm, gnarliness, dread, and light-hearted fun to make it a worthwhile watch. 

 

Cold Storage takes place two decades after military man Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson) and his trusted partner Trinny Romano (Lesley Manville) just barely managed to contain a highly infectious, mutating fungus in Western Australia. The fungus now resides in a self-storage facility in middle-of-nowhere America, overseen by lowly security guard Travis (Stranger Things’ Joe Keery) and his new co-worker Naomi (Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell). After sitting dormant for some time, rising temperatures reawaken the microorganism, unleashing terrors on the facility and making unlikely heroes out of Travis and Naomi.

 

Renowned screenwriter David Koepp, who pens the screenplay from the 2019 novel that he wrote, is no stranger to sci-fi and genre fare. His screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park put him on the map, after which he penned the likes of War of the Worlds (2005), Stir of Echoes, and Secret Window. With nearly 40 years of scripts under his belt, Koepp instinctively knows how to create an enticing entry point into a movie like this, a skill he flexes in Cold Storage.

 

The set-up for the story is grounded in real-life historical events tied to the Skylab interstellar disaster from 1979. For those unfamiliar, Skylab, NASA’s first space station, came crashing down into Earth’s atmosphere, spreading debris across the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. To earn money from tourists, locals placed pieces of the fallen Skylab wreckage that they found outside of their homes and made museums out of them. This is where the story of Cold Storage kicks in as Koepp’s screenplay poses the question: what if one of the pieces of the fallen Skylab wreckage brought a deadly microorganism back down to Earth with it? 

 

With interesting exposition established, the film flashes forward 20 years after this microorganism has been (seemingly) locked safely away and focuses on the fateful night the contagious fungus breaks from its containment. We’re introduced to our protagonist Travis, played by Joe Keery, an ex-convict and down-on-his-luck security guard sporting a Southern twang and bleached blonde hair. As became clear with his performance as the beloved Steve Harrington in Stranger Things, no one plays endearingly dopey like Joe Keery. The Massachusetts-born actor has a natural charisma that shines brightly throughout the film and that allows him to craft a compelling lead to root for.

 

Side-by-side with Keery for this night from hell is Barbarian star Georgina Campbell, whose first night as an employee at the self-storage facility could not go any crazier. Keery and Campbell share subtle, yet effective chemistry and, even in the absence of substantive backstories to flesh out their characters, are a joy to watch, both in their panicked attempts to survive a wild night and in the burgeoning romance that blossoms between them. 

 

Unlike other, similar films, Cold Storage employs deliberate pacing to sufficiently build dread before all hell breaks loose. After a gruesome prologue, Koepp opts not to dive straight into the gnarly and nasty, instead letting his film breathe and unfold organically.

 

Those seeking thrill-a-minute creature feature antics may come away disappointed with this pacing, but the film surprisingly proves most compelling before the real action kicks into gear. The viewer, unlike Keery and Campbell’s characters at first, know that something is going to go terribly wrong in this storage facility, which creates a sense of exciting tension as we anticipate the horrors that are to come.

 

Unfortunately, the film loses its way somewhat once the dread subsides in favor of attempts at more overt thrills. Although it features tons of delightfully gnarly visuals to feast on, director Jonny Campbell’s movie can’t quite seem to maintain its level of suspense and engagement in the second half.

 

Multiple elements are thrown in the mix, including the ex-husband of Campbell’s character, a crew of thieves, and even a pistol-wielding Vanessa Redgrave, but none of them quite elevate the film beyond surface-level entertainment. Films that take their time on the front-end typically earn their more deliberate pacing with big thrills and subversive story directions in their second act, two attributes Cold Storage disappointingly lacks.

 

The relative failure to deliver excitement and unpredictability likely comes from the film’s reluctance to wholeheartedly embrace any of the various subgenres it occupies. Cold Storage is clearly influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Keery’s character is even introduced to the audience as he reads a copy of Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers).

 

Restricted to a contained setting and featuring ordinary people facing an extraordinary, extra-terrestrial threat, the film also clearly evokes John Carpenter’s The Thing, especially as it dips its toes into similarly gruesome visuals. It also has strands of government conspiracy stories, namely The X-Files and Men in Black, and, as mentioned, an endearing romance to root for that harkens back to Shaun and Liz’s romance in Shaun of the Dead. And, on top of all that, there’s a light sense of humor resonating throughout the film.

 

Perplexingly, Cold Storage never fully commits to any of these various tones, influences, and subgenres. In turn, what results is a horror film that isn’t that scary, a comedy that isn’t that funny, a conspiracy theory story that isn’t that intriguing, and an action movie that isn’t that action-packed.

 

Despite its tonal imbalances and second-half missteps, Cold Storage delivers the kind of light genre fare many, less critical audience members will delight in. The film may not make the most of its talented cast and crew, nor does it evoke the quality of its myriad of influences, but there’s good fun to be had here for those with 90 minutes to spare and with a proclivity for the repulsive and irreverent.