Behind a charismatic cast and fun idea, Cold Storage does enough to entertain.
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Every artistic medium has its own distinct advantages. Film has the advantage of using all of someone's senses to craft ideas, which means the total package of sound, images, and how stitch it all together has limitless possibilities for the same story. But they are more likely to be limited by budgets. As much as you might want to make your own superhero movie, crafting the spectacle audiences have come to expect from superhero cinema isn't something you can create on a shoestring budget. Whereas a novel can be as expansive as it wants to be and the only limitation is the author's mastery of language and imagination. And those differences are where friction can arise in an adaptation. I bring this up because I think today's movie Cold Storage is a great example of a big concept trying to be made on a budget, with mixed results.
The Setup
Years ago, a Skylab space station sent a terrifying viral pathogen crashing down from earth's atmosphere onto the planet's surface. Decades later the pathogen is still alive...but not as well managed. See the facility holding the terrifying fungus has been turned into a self-storage business and containment is starting to fail. Now it'll be up to some gung-ho government agents and two night-shift workers at the facility to ensure that the fungus is contained and destroyed forever.
Cold Storage is solid lark of a movie. It's more or less a B-movie with A-level actors who are all having fun slumming it. See our lead actor Joe Kerry going from serious fights for survival in Stranger Things to an absurdist splatter fest made for a percentage of the money 10 minutes of that show cost to make.
It's got a number of notable flaws, but none that I'd consider deal-breakers. So let's get into the good and the not so good.
Good: Solid Horror Comedy Instincts
Horror comedies feel far easier to make than they really are, because you generally need something more besides a funny play on a horror movie concept. For instance, Shaun of the Dead relies on the dialogue, editing and genre tropes to make its zombie movie a comedy.
In Cold Storage's case it has three elements that make it work.
Number one is good old-fashioned character comedy. We've got Joe Kerry as an ex-con who's trying to turn his life around, but also wants to connect with his cute co-worker. He's giving agreeable stoner energy without drugs being present. Which means a lot of the movie plays like a cute workplace rom-com...until the fungus zombies show up.
Once said fungus zombies show up, then we're diving more into a splatterfest where every conflict between our heroes and an infected entity is designed to be as absurd as possible with gross-as-hell payoffs.
Once said fungus zombies show up, then we're diving more into a splatterfest where every conflict between our heroes and an infected entity is designed to be as absurd as possible with gross-as-hell payoffs.
And finally, the movie constantly undercuts the seriousness of its own premise by adding in silly elements. Like Liam Neeson's government agent is highly competent but also has a bad back that just might give out on him at the worst possible times.
Needs Work: Blending Ideas and Storylines
Cold Storage has two main storylines working in tandem through most of the run time. On the one side we have our two colleagues trying to navigate and fend off fungus zombies and other related misadventures at their job. On the other side, we have a government agent trying to fend off a fungus world takeover with little to no assistance from his own government due to bureaucratic dickishness.
And it feels like the movie either need more time or to prioritize one of these storylines.
A theme hanging over a lot of this movie is a pretty damning endictment about how governments, in particular the U.S. government, respond to threats at this scale. That we deal with them once and we never have to deal with them again. And then a bunch of innocent people have to deal with the fallout and someone might have to go rogue against their own government's wishes to do what's right.
I think this could be conveyed a bit better, because the movie kinda treats the government dragging its feet as one guy being a dick versus a larger systemic issue, since the people he does get to help him are all within the system or were are one point.
On the other end, our employees don't get a lot of time to reveal their characters outside of Joe Kerry's Teacake being a nice guy and Georgina Campbell's Naomi bonding with Teacake and dealing with her not-so-pleasant ex with her colleague.
My best guess is that a lot of this development was a sacrifice to the runtime and budget, but it is a limiting factor.
On the other end, our employees don't get a lot of time to reveal their characters outside of Joe Kerry's Teacake being a nice guy and Georgina Campbell's Naomi bonding with Teacake and dealing with her not-so-pleasant ex with her colleague.
My best guess is that a lot of this development was a sacrifice to the runtime and budget, but it is a limiting factor.
Good: Fun Take on An Old Premise
For those unfamiliar, the screenwriter for this film, and author for the book the film is based on David Koepp enjoys making movies based on semi-fantastic extrapulations of real scientific concepts. In this case the baseline is, "what if that zombie fungus could take over something bigger than an insect?"
So unlike other zombies that are driven solely by hunger and can only be killed with a headshot, Cold Storage's creatures are being driven by an ever-evolving hive mind....and they also burn through their host as both a method of spreading and disposing of damaged hosts.
This leads to a lot of silly takes on fun ideas like a zombie infected animal that moves through the facility with purpose or a person/animal everyone assumed was dead coming back to life only to explode into pieces. Very splatter movie inspired. Very fun.
Needs Work: More Than A Few Logic Leaps
I tend not to have an issue with movies following "movie logic" so travel times and people surviving certain scenarios isn't a big deal. That said, despite the movie including a fungus that barely needs an opening to find a new host, that movie plays real fast and loose with it's own rules, with Teacake and Georgina often being in the splash zone or putting their face right by this nasty stuff and not getting infected.
Same goes for a number of items in the finale when the movie goes into full summer blockbuster ending seemingly on a dime. You could argue it's to match the silly tone, but there are limits and this movie hits them every now and then.
Same goes for a number of items in the finale when the movie goes into full summer blockbuster ending seemingly on a dime. You could argue it's to match the silly tone, but there are limits and this movie hits them every now and then.
The Verdict: Yeah It's Alright
Behind a charismatic cast and fun idea, Cold Storage does enough to entertain. 6/10
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