Cold Storage opens with text explaining what happened to Skylab. Skylab, a satellite carrying numerous experiments, fell out of orbit in 1979, with its debris plummeting to Earth. NASA believed all of the wreckage had been recovered, until microbiologist Dr. Hero Martins (Sosie Bacon) receives a call from a mysterious man claiming that one overlooked oxygen tank still contains one of those experiments.
Dr. Martins immediately travels to Australia with two NASA bioterrorism experts, Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson) and Trini Romano (Lesley Manville). The trio examine the tank and discover a living green mold growing inside it. The experiment proves to be deadly, as they also find the town’s residents dead, all gathered on rooftops with their heads and torsos split open.
After taking a small sample of the fungus, the team bombs the town and stores the specimen in a Defense Security facility. Years later, the facility is decommissioned and converted into a self storage company.
Travis “Teacake” Meacham (Joe Keery) works the night shift as a security guard at the company, alongside a new co-worker named Naomi (Georgina Campbell). When the two hear a strange sound coming from the walls of their office, they decide to investigate it. This leads them to discover that beneath the building lies the supposedly frozen and forgotten fungus. It has already escaped containment and begun infecting living creatures both inside and outside the facility.
Meanwhile, Robert Quinn is alerted by NASA to a sudden temperature breach. With the help of an operator named Abigail (Ellora Torchia), he quickly heads to Kansas, where the storage company is located.
Time is of the essence here. While Teacake and Naomi remain largely unaware of the true nature of the fungus and struggle with other problems unfolding around them, Robert races to gather the resources he needs before the situation spirals completely out of control.
Cold Storage won’t impress you with its story or technicals, but it does try to entertain you. And for a horror-comedy with no ambition to become a blockbuster juggernaut or launch a massive franchise whatsoever, that’s really the bare minimum you’d want. At the very least, it should feel like you got your money’s worth.
Going back to why it’s fun, a lot of that comes down to a game cast.
Liam Neeson is clearly past his prime at this point. A quick look at his recent filmography shows that aside from The Naked Gun, most of his past and upcoming projects feel like B-movies. But Neeson has always been a willing and game actor, and that’s really all he needs to be for a movie like this. He doesn’t need to look intimidating, charming, or even particularly convincing as a bioterrorism expert. He just needs to deliver lines with that deep, cool voice and lean into acting old, since being old now seems to be one of his character’s defining quirk.
Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell are the real heart and soul of the film. Fresh off his Stranger Things stint, Keery remains an effortlessly charming presence and someone you naturally want to root for. He also gets the clearest character growth in the movie, evolving from a guy who agrees too quickly into someone who learns to be more decisive. On the other hand, Campbell serves as a strong moral counterweight to Keery’s Teacake. She’s someone who questions, thinks things through, and understands consequences. And when you put these two together, they just work.
Everything else about Cold Storage is the usual stuff. It starts with an experiment, it spreads too fast, stupid people get infected, and eventually the military steps in to clean up the mess. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does give it a spin to see if it still works. To a certain extent, it does work, though it also proves just how tired this trope has become over the years. Without the cast and the film’s commitment to being fun and entertaining, this would have been a complete dud.
3/5