Cold Storage

Neeson cashing his January check. Steve "The Hair" Harrington. Space fungus. Sounds pretty good. And it is actually pretty good. Cold Storage is the mutant love child of Slither, Evolution, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It is a shockingly competent B movie that knows exactly what it is and never overstays its welcome.

The plot was clearly written on the back of a napkin. Back in 1979, a biological space fungus crashes to Earth. The government contains it and locks it down. Fast forward eighteen years, and the government simply decides to sell the property. Mmmmmm, yep. The United States military is holding a highly contagious, apocalyptic space organism that can wipe out humanity, and they just put the deed on the open real estate market to be turned into a commercial self storage facility in Kansas. Whatever, just go with it.

Naturally, global warming heats up an underground spring, thawing out our cryo prisoned space goo. The organism attempts to escape and reach the outside world. The only people standing in its way are two minimum wage night shift workers named Teacake (Joe Keery) and Naomi (Georgina Campbell), who are occasionally joined by a grizzled, retired bioterror operative named Quinn (Neeson).

The script was penned by David Koepp , adapting his own novel. Koepp is the guy who wrote Jurassic Park and a lot of Spielberg joins, which means he actually knows how to structure a thriller. The pacing is tight. Nobody takes the premise too seriously, but the actors all play the material straight enough, and when they don't other characters usually call them out on it. That is the true secret to good camp. If the actors wink at the camera, the tension completely dissolves. Here, the characters are genuinely terrified while ridiculous things happen around them.

There are also some interesting, deeply cynical undertones regarding recent UFO declassifications, government incompetence, and post pandemic paranoia.

Joe Keery carries the movie. He proves he is a highly capable leading man outside of the Netflix ecosystem. Georgina Campbell acts as a great, sharp anchor to his goofy energy. The straight women to Kerry's bruhisms. And Liam Neeson? He hams it up, maybe a bit too much, clearly enjoying the absurdity of the situation instead of just sleepwalking through another generic revenge thriller.

If there is one glaring complaint to make, it is the over reliance on CGI. A gooey, body snatching movie like this is begging for wet, gross, practical effects. Instead, a lot of the visual heavy lifting is done by glossy computer graphics. It breaks the spell a bit and prevents the movie from becoming a legendary cult classic.

Everything wraps up nicely enough. Neeson finally fulfills his lifelong mission, Teacake and Naomi connect, and the organism is supposedly stopped. Well, at least it appears so until the obligatory credits stinger threatens to turn this fun, standalone romp into a sequel.

Ultimately, Cold Storage is a decent, unexpected ride that avoids getting bogged down in useless lore or heavy exposition. It is a highly entertaining throwback to an era when movies were just allowed to be goofy.