COLD STORAGE
(director/writer: Jonny Campbell; screenwriter: David Koepp, based on the novel by David Koepp; cinematographer: Tony Slater Ling; editor: Billy Sneddon; music: Mathieu Lamboley; cast: Joe Keery (Travis), Georgina Campbell (Naomi), Liam Neeson (Robert Quinn), Vanessa Redgrave (May Rooney), Lesley Manville (Trini Romano), Aaron Hefferman (Mike), Gavin Spokes (Griffin), Sosie Bacon (Dr. Hero Martins), Rob Collins (Enos Namatjira), Ellora Torchia (intelligence officer); Runtime: 99; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Gavin Polone, David Koepp; Studio Canal/Samuel Goldwyn Films; 2026)
“Silly but entertaining.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The modestly budgeted thriller is written and directed by Jonny Campbell (“The Casual Vacancy”/”Alien Autopsy”). Campbell co-writes it with its prolific author David Koepp, whose 2019 novel was adapted for the film. It meshes together as a sci-fi action story that shoots for being both a dark comedy and horror film. Though funny throughout, it never builds enough tension for its horror story to shine.
Ten years ago Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson), a smarty-pants bio-terrorist science expert for NASA, led a group of disease investigators, with his trusted assistant Trini Romano (Lesley Manville), to investigate a Skylab disaster in an outpost in Western Australia, of an oxygen tank that fell from the sky and destroyed the area when it released a green fungus. It also took the life of a careless scientist, Dr. Hero Martins (Sosie Bacon), who was one of the investigators.
After a decade, at an underground self-storage center on an Army base in rural Kansas, a multiple of people are dead from the escaping green fungus that’s stored there. The vics have their chests blown open from the inside. The storage center is guarded at night by the misfit low-ranking security guard Travis (Joe Keery), nicknamed Teacake, and his assistant Naomi (Georgina Campbell). Through their incompetency, the deadly fungus, a potential military weapon, escapes from where it was stored.
The retired Quinn returns ten years later to investigate this latest fungus disaster.
At the center’s death scene are Naomi’s ex-boyfriend Mike (Aaron Heffernan), the facility’s grumpy, arrogant and corrupt manager Griffin (Gavin Spokes) and, of course, a biker gang who are around to buy stolen goods from the manager. The great Brit actress Vanessa Redgrave has a cameo as an elderly woman who comes into the unit to get something of hers that’s stored but is unaware of the danger (I would have liked to see her in a bigger and more meaningful role).
The derivative story (think Aliens!) was silly but entertaining, though it could have used more gravitas and less subplots. But its one-liners were funny and the science was plausible.
REVIEWED ON 2/23/2026 GRADE: B-
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