Words by MATT MAYTUM
You’ll get a good idea of the tone to expect from sci-fi comedy-horror Cold Storage from its opening info dump. Title cards give a reminder of the (real-life) 1979 incident in which NASA’s Skylab space station fell into the Earth’s atmosphere, with debris scattering over Western Australia. So far, so ominous, until it concludes, ‘Pay attention – this shit is real.’
From there we have another scene-setting prologue, which takes place in Australia in the 90s. Military types Robert Quinn and Trinny Romano (Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville, delightful together in the polar opposite of their last collab, weepie terminal-illness drama Ordinary Love) are called in to help Dr. Hero Martins (Sosie Bacon) investigate an incident relating to a debris site. Strap on your hazmat suit… The film quickly sets out its splattery B-movie stall, before the problematic fungus that’s causing the body horror is secured in an underground facility. Cue a timelapse to the present day where the facility is now a self-storage business, and on shift are former prison inmate Teacake (Joe Keery of Stranger Things and Djo fame) and single mum Naomi (Georgina Campbell).
The amiable, flirty co-workers go exploring and accidentally disrupt the extraterrestrially-infused sample (you’d think Campbell would know better than to go exploring creepy basements after starring in Barbarian), and this knowing genre piece conspires to bring some of the worst people in their lives – their boss, her ex – to the facility for one gross night. Contact with the fungus will turn a human (or animal, for that matter) into a bloated zombie that will spew infectious vomit before their body bursts. Director Jonny Campbell (best known for TV work such as Westworld) keeps things moving at a clip, with a sure command of tone. Not only do the jokes keep flying amid set-pieces delivered with no small amount of tension, but he understands first and foremost that this kind of high-concept throwback depends on likeable characters, and Keery and Campbell are immensely easy to root for. Neeson further explores his straight-man comedy chops after The Naked Gun, and he sparks winningly with Manville, who also got the memo (and seems to genuinely welcome) the assignment.
Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp (who adapts his own 2019 novel here) is within his comfort zone, delivering a smartly-paced 99 minutes populated with characters who are either appealing or expendable as appropriate, science that’s just about on the right side of believable, and stakes that actually feel perilous. A horror geared towards cheers and laughs over anything more genuinely unsettling, Cold Storage does a neat job of putting the fun into parasitic fungus.
Words by MATT MAYTUM
Pictures courtesy of StudioCanal
Cold Storage is in cinemas now
