Cold Storage

There’s a decidedly retro feel to Cold Storage, Jonny Campbell’s first film in two decades. The director’s previous big screen venture was Alien Autopsy, starring Ant and Dec, and he evidently has a penchant for 1960s Area 51 sci-fi. His latest film is part throwback, part zomcom.

The film sees self-storage facility workers Teacake (Joe Keery) and Naomi (Georgina Campbell) battle a highly infectious parasitic fungus that renders its hosts the projectile-vomiting, gooey walking dead. Liam Neeson is back in action man mode, playing biochemical expert Robert Quinn. He and his partner, Trinny Romano (Lesley Manville, perfecting an American accent), are the only people who know the true horrors that this fungal menace can unleash.

A zombified Ghostbusters meets The Bob, with a smidgen of body horror (or, rather, an attempt at body horror that’s more gross-out humour), Cold Storage skips across multiple genres. There are moments of levity throughout, primarily via Neeson’s self-aware performance that pastiches his oeuvre of grizzled hardmen. Manville is a delight alongside him, and there’s a certain surreal charm seeing the lauded British thespian and indie queen in such a popcorn role. Even Neeson’s former mother-in-law, Vanessa Redgrave, makes a fleeting, if underused, appearance as an elderly woman living in a self-storage unit. Appealing to younger viewers, Keery and Campbell are likeable, enthusiastic leads.

But every beat of the script feels all too familiar. One can guess the punchline for most of the jokes, and even the jump scares are less jumps and more eyebrow raises. The CGI also appears a little dated, though this may be a deliberate stylistic choice given the movie’s nod to the past. With a refined script, Cold Storage could have been a more ambitious project, considering its immense potential as a contemporary take on splatstick sci-fi.

With comically over-the-top gore, the feature has its tongue firmly in its cheek, offering a refreshingly inoffensive viewing experience. A nostalgic creature feature with a modern twist, Cold Storage is sure to delight sci-fi and horror aficionados who delight in kitschy nods to the B-movie classics of yore.