Because I’m such an immature child at heart, I must confess I have a weakness for goopy, gross, horror/comedies that prop their jokes up with copious heaping of slime, goo and the occasional popping head. I don’t know what it is about them, but humorous flicks that deal with outlandish body-horror and planet threatening infestation always tends to make me as excited as a sugar-loaded child and I had rather high hopes for Cold Storage. Scripted by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man) and based from his own novel, we also find that along with plenty of viscous fluids we find a surprisingly starry cast willing to go toe to toe with an extraterrestrial fungus. But can Cold Storage manage to match quips and drips with such similarly themed films as Slither, Night Of The Creeps and Return Of The Living Dead?
Well, not quite – but you have to give it points for trying, right?
Way back in 1979, the Skylab space station is unavoidably decommissioned when it suddenly experiences atmospheric re-entry, scattering all of its questionable scientific experiments all across the globe. Luckily, the vast majority of said science shit burned up in the atmosphere, but there’s always one trouble item that manages to punch through and in this case it’s an oxygen tank that crash lands in Australia and is promptly used by a local farmer as a tourist attraction. However, by 2005 something has gone terribly wrong which requires biochemist Hero Martins and Pentagon bioterror operatives Robert Quinn and Trini Romano to investigate and what they find could end up being a threat to the entire human race. Long story short, an infectious space fungus has decimated the entire town and after sustaining a few casualties and injuries of their own, the specialists manage to lock the place down, blow it up and store a sample in a deep dark hole where it’ll never get out.
Fast forward again to the present day and that deep dark hole has been sold off by the military and is now the Atchison Self Storage unit, where people can keep their belongings in storage and working there is minimum wage security guards Travis and Naomi. The former is a chatty, down on his luck loser who is just trying to stay out of jail while the latter is an excitable bundle of energy who is looking to spend her first night on the job exploring. But as they both try to stay out of the way of their asshole boss, they can’t help but seek out a strange beeping that’s coming from somewhere within the facility and after a bit of hasty renovation (they break down a wall). Unbeknownst to them, rising temperatures has caused that pesky fungus to become active again as it starts to spread via rats and other forms of wildlife and pretty soon matters spiral out of control when angry ex-boyfriends and random biker gangs suddenly start showing up. But the good news is that Travis and Naomi will soon have backup in the form of Robert Quinn – the bad news is that he’s bringing an unstable nuke with him…
To cut straight to the gooey, squishy meat of the matter, Cold Storage proves to be one of those films that just can’t quite hit that sweet spot when it comes to merging sweet, likable characters with aggressive, brightly coloured grue. Undeniably fun, but never actually funny, you’ll spend the entire, nicely punchy, run time chuckling throughout, but rarely will you actually catch yourself legitimately laughing out loud, which is the whole point of a film like this. Over the years, filmmakers like James Gunn, Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi and Fred Decker have refined the gore comedy into something that busts guts both figuratively and literally, but Johnny Campbell (he of Ant & Dec conspiracy comedy Alien Autopsy) can’t quite manage to give the jokes the timing and punch they need to get them over the top.
It’s a shame, because the lion’s share of the plot borrows heavily from an absolute favorite of mine, Dan O’Bannon’s punk rock zombie blowout, Return Of The Living Dead. Both include storage facilities under seige from a growing epidemic that’s causing various animals and people to stagger around long after they should be dead and the Atchison Self Storage unit and its hapless employees are somewhat beholden to the Uneeda Medical Supply and the blue collar, average joes who work there. There’s even a hint of that punk rock sensibility thanks to the addition of a mismatched biker gangs who stumble upon the chaos and a sense that the military will employ a scorched earth tactic to halt the infection if necessary; but while I appreciate the copious nods in Koepp’s screenplay, Cold Storage just doesn’t end up being anywhere near as memorable as the films it’s emulating.
That doesn’t mean that the film is a complete washout. For a start, the comfortably filled plus column includes quite an impressive array of actors who bring a genuinely likable vibe to the film. Stranger Things VIP Joe Keery is on hand to deliver more Steve Harrington-esque charisma as a similarly lovable goof and stealth scream queen Georgina Campbell (Barbarian, Bird Box Barcelona, Psycho Killer) brings a sparkle-eyed energy to her perky single mom and the chemistry between the two crackles nicely. Elsewhere, we find Liam Neeson’s career change from creaky actioners to more sillier fare continuing nicely as the gravel-voiced bioterror operative tearing across the country, desperately trying to quash this virus before things really get out of hand. However, on a fun note, the movie takes a sneaky jab at his “old action guy” reputation by having his back finally give out during an action scene leaving him to try and shoot down puss-filled mutants while laid up on the ground. To continue the whole quirky feel of things, the cast also amusingly contains Lesley Manville and Vanessa Redgrave, but the movie frequently offers up a bunch of comedy characters without actually managing to take full advantage of them.
However, while this proves to be fairly frustrating, Campbell hopes that delivering an exploding deer; a squirming, squealing rat king; a zombie cat and a whole bunch of green zombie vomit will somehow appease. Believe it or not, it actually does – but while watching various losers slowly mutate into misshapen virus carriers does provide plenty of enjoyment, again, the skills of classic Peter Jackson splatstick seem to ellude Campbell, meaning that while Cold Storage is always fun, it’s seldomly funny.
A bright script loaded with quirks, witty characters and a slick, colourful look make Cold Storage a spirited way to kill a couple of hours, however, the filmmakers can’t seem to bring it all together into something that becomes greater than the sum of its slimy parts. Still, having Joe Keery rock another expressive hairstyle while having deer pop like balloons still proves to be diverting enough.
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