Cold Storage

Sometimes you’re just in the mood for a bit of gunge. Sure, cinema can move us, teach us, thrill us and inspire us, but every now and then you just want to watch people spewing green slime before their heads explode. You know, like in a straight-to-VHS horror/sci-fi/comedy from the ’80s or ’90s. Or, indeed, in Cold Storage: an unashamed throwback to a past era of low-fi, high-spirited creature-feature fun. Think Tremors, only with extra-terrestrial, mind-controlling slime instead of giant worm-things. 

Based on a novel by David Koepp (who also adapts) and directed by Jonny Campbell (whose last movie was the 2002 Ant-and-Dec-starring Alien Autopsy, but don’t let that put you off), Cold Storage unleashes the aforementioned green slimy space-stuff in a Kansas self-storage facility patrolled by a pair of bored millennials. Teacake (Stranger Things’ Joe Keery) is a talkative ex-con just trying to stay on the straight and narrow; Naomi (Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell) is a listless single mother trying to balance her responsibilities with med-school ambitions. Together, this likeable pair become the front line of defence against the extinction of all life on Earth, while also, of course, falling for each other.  

Think Tremors with mind-controlling slime 

But though Keery and Campbell have riffy chemistry, it’s the supporting cast who command the attention. Foremost is Liam Neeson as the grizzled US military specialist buzzed back into service when this smalltown crisis sparks. With a wink to his status as a grey-maned action hero, he’s lumbered with a dicky lumbar, which amusingly curtails his hard man gun antics. Then there’s the surprise inclusion of British theatre doyennes Lesley Manville and Vanessa Redgrave, the former as Neeson’s world-weary partner (what a double act), the latter as a grieving widow who sleeps in a self-storage unit and packs a sidearm. There’s no denying the quality they bring to this enjoyably silly film.  

Of course, the whole brain-corrupting fungus thing has already been done more elegantly by The Last of Us. And despite his ambitious visual gambits (including a frantic scuttling cockroach-POV oner), Campbell’s reliance on limited-budget CGI, rather than making the most of the film’s prosthetic makeup effects, blemishes the experience a little. But perhaps we shouldn’t ask too much. As a cheap-and-cheerful, anarchic gross-out horror/sci-fi/comedy, it has a lot going for it. 

In US theaters Feb 13 and UK cinemas Feb 20.