Cold Storage Review: Mutant Fungus Horror Comedy Stuffs Fun Into Fungi
Stranger Things star Joe Keery and Barbarian actress Georgina Campbell lead the charge in Cold Storage, an overstuffed horror-comedy-action film that pits them against a virulent brain spore outbreak. The movie delivers endless wisecracks and splatterhouse grossness but struggles to offer much more beyond its frantic pace and stellar supporting cast.
A Stellar Cast Battles Brain Spores
An on-screen warning screams, "Pay attention! This shit is real!" at the start of this genre-blending outing. As deadly as the fungus it unleashes, an outbreak of sardonic attitude runs rampant throughout the film. Keery and Campbell play bantering storage facility workers tasked with containing a potential apocalypse, with intermittent high-grade thespian help from Lesley Manville, Vanessa Redgrave, and Liam Neeson. The casting suggests someone clearly called in a few favors to assemble such talent.
Plot Origins and Government Negligence
The story kicks off in 1979 when the Skylab space station falls out of orbit, with one of its research containers landing in the Australian outback. Fast-forward to the early 2000s, and a team of bioterror operatives, including Robert (Neeson) and Trini (Manville), attempt to wipe out the virulent fungus that escapes—though not before it turns one of them into a human smoothie. The Kansas facility where they store a sample is later decommissioned, and the ground floor is converted into storage lockers. Before you can say "heinous government negligence," night-shifters Teacake (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell) are itching to investigate a random alarm sounding behind the walls.
Screenwriting and Directorial Choices
Screenwriting maestro David Koepp, adapting his own 2019 novel, may have been suffering from a case of brain spores himself. He lets the film feverishly propagate through a discipline-free combination of straightforward pestilence thriller, Kevin Smith-esque wage-slave comedy, and gleeful B-movie grossfest. The mutant mildew obeys no discernible rules other than encouraging its hosts to distribute it in the most splatterhouse way possible, from encrusting rat kings to self-skewering cats. Meanwhile, Keery's ex-con and Campbell's veterinary student are saddled with stretches of prolix wisecrackery that, due to sheer volume, rarely zings with the sharpness of Shane Black's dialogue.
Pacing and Performances
Director Jonny Campbell, last seen in cinemas with the poorly-received 2006 Ant and Dec comedy Alien Autopsy, keeps the pace frantic. This includes a Fight Club-style internal bodycam that courses along infected synapses. Not even Neeson, stocked to the gills with flinty quips like "We are at pucker factor 10," introduces much rigor—especially as he falls over every time he goes into action. The cranial explosion count is impressive, but only once does Cold Storage rise to creating a more insidiously disturbing moment of parasitic horror: during the intro, when the camera rises above tin shack roofs to reveal townsfolk erupted like human pork crackling.
Final Verdict and Release Details
Where Cold Storage initially threatens to be a new The Thing, it finally serves up a sloppy zomcom. It's just about enough for a Friday night but not much else. The film is out now in the US, on 20 February in the UK, and on 12 March in Australia, offering a mix of thrills and laughs for fans of horror-comedy hybrids.
