Stranger Things' Joe Keery stars alongside Georgina Campbell, Lesley Manville, Vanessa Redgrave and Liam Neeson in this overstuffed horror-comedy-action film about a deadly fungus outbreak. The story begins in 1979 when a Skylab research container falls into the Australian outback, later leading to a bioterror operation that fails to contain the virulent spores. The sample is stored in a Kansas facility that is later decommissioned and converted into storage lockers, setting the stage for night-shift workers Teacake (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell) to investigate a mysterious alarm.
Screenwriter David Koepp adapts his own 2019 novel, but the film lacks discipline, combining pestilence thriller, wage-slave comedy and B-movie grossfest. The mutant mildew has no clear rules, encouraging hosts to spread it in splatterhouse ways, from encrusting rat kings to self-skewering cats. Keery and Campbell are burdened with prolix wisecrackery that rarely zings, while Neeson delivers flinty quips but falls over every time he goes into action.
Director Jonny Campbell keeps the pace frantic, including a Fight Club-style internal bodycam. The film offers a high cranial explosion count but only one truly disturbing moment of parasitic horror: the intro where townsfolk erupt like human pork crackling. Ultimately, Cold Storage threatens to be a new The Thing but serves up a sloppy zomcom, just about enough for a Friday night.
