Cold Storage review: Like parasitic fungus, this horror comedy will grow on you

Fungal horror, or "sporror," never dies.

Despite the subgenre starting its spread way back in the '50s with films like The Quatermass Xperiment, it's still going strong, continuing to release spores into fiction and horror films, infecting everything we read and watch. Within the last few years we've survived the cordyceps of The Last of Us, rotted through the novels of T. Kingfisher and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and held our breath through pandemic films like In the Earth.

Sporror tales tend to sit on a spectrum of horrific to comedic, and from its very first, abrasively edited title shots, Cold Storage declares you're in for a deeply unserious film. "PAY ATTENTION," the film demands in large text. "THIS SHIT IS REAL."

Directed by Jonny Campbell (Westworld, Am I Being Unreasonable?), and written by Jurassic Park co-scribe David Koepp based on his 2019 novel, Cold Storage feeds on its fungal horror heritage. If you've spent the winter ready to thaw out with an infectious horror that knows its subgenre lineage and doesn't take itself too seriously, Cold Storage might be the grisly silliness you've been looking for. 

What is Cold Storage about?

Without a doubt, Cold Storage wears its references on its sleeve. A character is seen reading Jack Finney's classic 1955 sci-fi novel, The Body Snatchers. Nods to John Carpenter's 1982 classic body possession horror The Thing are hard to miss. In fact, the film often feels like a 99-minute nod to The X-Files, drawing parallels with the series' famous parasitic episodes "Field Trip" and "Ice," the latter of which was Chris Carter's own homage to Carpenter's film.

And with all its fungal horror history brandished in one hand, Koepp's script (and book) takes a real event — NASA's Skylab falling out of orbit and crashing into pieces in Western Australia in 1979 — and makes it the catalyst for the film's gruesome events. 

In the sci-fi-worthy orange dust of Australia's Gibson Desert, three U.S. Defense Department operatives (Liam Neeson, Lesley Manville, and Sosie Bacon) respond to an SOS call from the outback town of Kiwirrkurra: "Something came out of your tank." We learn a hazardous, terrestrial fungus was sent into space with Skylab, and now it's landed back on Earth — and the whole town is dead. When tragedy strikes, the team is able to lock down the fungus, but there's just one problem: Who's going to store this thing? Having not bothered to involve the Australian government in any way, the remains of the U.S. team nuke the town and head home, ready to contain the monstrosity in a secret underground U.S. facility — which over time becomes a commercial self storage facility, where everyday folks store their crap unawares.

Cold Storage has a major cast.

It's here, 18 years later, that the fun/chaos begins with Stranger Things' Joe Keery and Barbarian's Georgina Campbell as chatty storage employee Travis "Teacake" Meacham and smart new recruit Naomi Williams, respectively. They hate their shitty boss (Daniel Rigby) and took on this pretty boring, minimum-wage job for their own reasons, so when a mysterious chirp begins from the facility's depths, it's their most exciting night in years. Investigating the noise as if they're solving an escape room (and thanks to Naomi's narratively convenient penchant for science), Travis and Naomi react like children as they get nearer to the long-sealed source, with Kerry and Campbell a well-paired duo.

As for the rest of the cast, there are Hollywood icons afoot, some more unexpected than others. Neeson, fresh from his gloriously deadpan turn in The Naked Gun, brings a muted level of this mismatched seriousness to Robert Quinn, a retired U.S. operative who knows this damned fungus well and fears the cataclysmic stakes.

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In the Earth star Ellora Torchia makes every second count as his eyes-on-the-inside of the U.S. military. The sublime Manville feels wildly underused as Quinn's old colleague Trinny Romano, though she gloriously chain-smokes through the few scenes she does have. And acting legend Vanessa Redgrave makes an inexplicable appearance as a customer with perfect timing.

Cold Storage spews ample goop. 

Being released just after the extremely gloppy Sam Raimi horror Send Help, Cold Storage's gruesome factor might seem a little lean compared to the Evil Dead master's latest work. However, the film realises its own gross-out vision, thanks to the genius of special makeup effects designers Lou and Dave Elsey. Yep, the team who brought you the corpiscle of True Detective: Night Country.

Thanks to the Elseys, Cold Storage is full of grisly, festering gore, with ample projectile blood spewing and copious exploding heads and chests as the fungus spreads through various beings. That includes Aaron Heffernan as Naomi's abusive ex, Mike, who was awful enough when he wasn't a zombie wanting to "throw up in your mouth." Koepp's script really tones down the terror of his book, opting for hilarity more often than pure scares. And though it feels like a stretch at times, the story shoehorns ways of drawing expendable humans to the facility for the fungus to demonstrate its terrible abilities, all while Neeson's Quinn races to contain it with his particular set of skills.

Director of photography Tony Slater-Ling also deploys body cams to shake things up with a sprinkle of found footage styling, and the film relishes in Death Stranding-meets-The Magic School Bus-worthy zooms through the systems of living organisms, as the parasitic fungus invades several doomed beings across the film. 

Unlike its hazardous fungus (or Koepp's original book), Cold Storage isn't that deep. Instead, the film is a fun body horror comedy that grows on you — or might result in projectile vomiting?

Cold Storage hits cinemas Feb. 13 in the U.S. and Feb. 20 in the UK.