Written by David Koepp, the man who penned Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, and Spider-Man, among many other notable blockbusters, and who adapts his own novel here, the plot is essentially Return of the Living Dead. Teacake (Joe Keery, Stranger Things) works the night shift at a self-storage company. Turns out, this particular facility was once a military site that housed the most contagious and dangerous biological agents known to man. Teacake and his new coworker, Naomi (Georgina Campbell, Barbarian), go poking around and discover, oopsie, the containment isn’t quite as secure as it once was, and a fast-acting space-fungus has escaped to turn people into a close approximation of zombies. Riding to the rescue, sort of, is Liam Neeson’s Robert Quinn, a grizzled, retired bioterror expert.
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Like I said, there's potential in many elements of this. Keery and Campbell have fantastic chemistry. He’s a motor-mouthed slacker ex-con who just wants to keep his head down, while she’s a driven veterinary student and mother, and easily bored. Think the coworker who always manages to get you, against your better judgment, involved in some sort of mischief on the clock. That’s the dynamic. Their banter and back and forth interplay carries most of the film. It doesn’t develop any deeper or amount to much, but it’s charming and moves things along. When Neeson shows up, he’s clearly having a blast as the cantankerous vet who is the only one aware just how dangerous this situation is. He also gets to play with a flamethrower. But the whole thing skates by on this sheen and charisma, but it never does more than the bare minimum.
For a vet like Koepp, this is very by-the-numbers screenwriting. Early on, we meet a woman, played by the great Vanessa Redgrave, visiting her storage locker. She disappears from the narrative only to pop up later at a key moment. Stakes escalate exactly where screenwriting books tell you they’re supposed to. Secrets and vital bits of information surface where they always surface, and complications arise just in time push things ahead. Quinn and his former sidekick, Romano (Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread), have a brief side adventure that mostly takes up time. (And when you get Lesley Manville for a couple of days, you damn well make use of Lesley Manville.) We meet Teacake’s sketchy boss, who may as well have “zombie fodder” stamped on his chest. It’s all fine, but you can’t miss the underlying formula of it all.
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The whole, “it’s fine,” vibe extends to much of the rest of the film as well. Director Jonny Campbell has worked primarily in TV, helming episodes of series like Westworld and Dracula, and while things are slick and well put together, it’s all very utilitarian. One can make the argument that the lack of signature style is in fact a style of its own, but it’s all perfunctory. While there’s goopy practical gore, it’s augmented by dodgy CGI depictions of animals and insects that don’t do the film any favors.
Calling a movie “pretty fun” is the most tepid recommendation ever, but at the same time, that’s both the best and worst thing I can say about Cold Storage. At one point in my notes I wrote, “I feel like I should be enjoying this more than I am.” While that sounds bad, it means I was enjoying it. It’s a decently entertaining movie. In many cases, that’s perfectly serviceable and will do the job. But given the people involved, and considering how close it often comes to being much more interesting and engaging than it is, it’s hard to walk away and not notice the missed potential. [Grade: C+/B-]
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