Movies and names.
It’s a subconscious thing with some, or sometimes, the only thing people do before considering a movie.
And that is, look at the names.
Specifically, the ones on the poster.
Actors (obvs) but “written by” and “directed by” are also big ones. And if you consider yourself a real cinephile, “produced by”.
Cold Storage has some impressive names attached to it. Also, “based on a novel” usually means there has been creative interpretation applied to the script, and most film makers usually LOVE flexing their game at such activity.
Throw in the fact that the writer is the man who wrote Carlito’s Way, the first Mission Impossible and a shit ton of Jurassic Park movies, and you have pedigree right there.
Plus, there is the cast. One made up of the cool guy from Stranger Things, the lead from (masterful) horror film Barbarian, Kevin Bacon’s daughter (the lead in the first Smile) and Liam frickin Neeson and Vanessa frickin Redgrave! Those are all decent hitters!
Plus-plus it is directed by… err someone with a lot of TV & doco credits, so we’ll see…

So, this film is a horror sci-fi set in a storage facility. And as locations go, that’s pretty cool. (Except I’ve yet to see a sci fi horror set in one be any good… 2012’s Storage 24 was one of the first and when you shoot an entire film in close up, it makes for a really shitty movie).
But I digress. Will this film be the exception?
It starts back in 1979 when Skylab fell to Earth, Western Australia (an event I actually remember, as I was both alive and on the same continent when it happened IRL). Once this happens, we soon find ourselves in Alien-bug-has-landed-on earth territory.
Fast jump to the exotic future of 2007 and said bug has been locked deep down inside a military storage facility all this time.
Except with time comes change and the facility has now become (on the surface at least) just a regular commercially-available-for-hire-by-the-general-public storage place.

And of course, 2007 is the year the deep cold vault containing the bug starts to fail…
So – what happens next – I’ll let Chris Dawes take you through.

This film hopes to answer two age old questions – Firstly, has the mold growing in my shower been conscious all along, and if so, have all the times I have smudged it with my arse driven it to vengeance?
And second! Is the reason we haven’t found aliens in Area 51 was that they hired Bazza to put up gyprock?
Cash job, of course.
The answer is yes to both, and thanks to top tier government fuckery uncolding the subterranean fridges, two down on their luck minimum-wagers are forced to do battle with a sentient sludge so profoundly roided up neither the Marines, the Hell’s Angels,
nor your butthead neighbour’s cat can knock it on its arse.
Damn your weakness, Ajax Spray and Wipe!
This film is pap. But it is pap made with a love of the genre and stars a cast of award winners who clearly enjoyed making a high budget B-Movie.
If you have two hours to switch your brain off and have a solid good time, you can do far worse than spending twenty bucks on this. Back to Ant.

So, as you can see, this is a fun popcorn romp, with some very strong ingredients.
But is it Tremors level B-grade horror/comedy par excellence?
For mine, not really. It has some very fine moments held up by an outstanding afore-mentioned cast, but its pacing is at times uneven. And certain story elements feel rushed or glossed over.
And for that I can only think to blame a director who is still finding his movie legs, as this is just his second feature. Although he has a lot of excellent TV credits, so maybe studio interference stuffed him around?
Who knows?

The Prognosis:

Worth a look, but lower the expectations the better. A good facility for some silly fun.
See what I did there?

• Antony Yee & Chris Dawes