David Koepp has accomplished every little thing from extra grounded thrillers in the best way of Panic Room and Black Bag to the imaginative blockbuster heights of the Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones franchises. Nevertheless, for all of the success he is had on display screen, Koepp has solely twice branched out into novel writing, and is now bringing one in every of them to life with Chilly Storage.
Combining some old-school alien horror with small-town comedy, Koepp’s script would not take itself too severely and strikes rapidly sufficient to maintain viewers hooked on its story. However even because it delivers sufficient enjoyable, and appropriately grisly, thrills to distract from the terrors of the true world, there are simply sufficient parts holding this one again from being a full-on kinetic jolt.
Chilly Storage Is Enjoyable Sufficient, However is Missing A Sure Vitality
Primarily led by Stranger Issues‘ Joe Keery, Barbarian‘s Georgina Campbell and Liam Neeson, Chilly Storage facilities on Travis “Teacake” Meacham, a nighttime safety employee at a Kansas self-storage facility, and Naomi Williams, his new coworker. As they get settled into what’s anticipated to be a quiet evening, the pair inadvertently bump into the outdated US army base the enterprise was constructed on high of, the place they uncover a weird parasitic fungus.
When the fungus begins to unfold and infect a number of folks and animals close by into grotesque monstrosities, retired bioterror operative Robert Quinn (Neeson) — who has his personal historical past with it — learns of its potential unfold and races to get to the ability earlier than it is too late. As a trio, they need to discover a approach to take down these contaminated and hold the fungus from infecting the world and making humanity extinct.
Whereas he could also be finest recognized for his capability to sort out the grandiose parts of a few of his tales, together with Warfare of the Worlds, one factor that Koepp has by no means gotten sufficient credit score for is his distinctive humorousness, usually bringing a dry wit to his scripts that creates a way of grounded realism in its characters. With Chilly Storage, he actually finds himself going for a few of his funniest materials for the reason that woefully underrated Ghost City, and majority of it lands, albeit not fairly to the heights it goals for.
Going for extra of a dry wit than gut-busting laughs, the film actually incites loads of quiet chuckles with its jokes. From Neeson’s character often combating a nasty again, but additionally carrying a nuclear warhead on his again, to fast quips between Teacake and Naomi about them being greater than meets the attention, and even the occasional COVID joke, there are sufficient actual human moments within the movie to maintain issues feeling simply grounded sufficient.
That being mentioned, Koepp’s script additionally simply narrowly retains Chilly Storage from ever feeling like greater than a surface-level style effort. For all their questioning of life decisions and mannerisms, Keery and Campbell’s characters nonetheless too usually really feel like two-dimensional figures for audiences to observe, by no means actually exhibiting any type of evolution or change come the movie’s finish. The identical could possibly be mentioned for Neeson’s Quinn, who primarily coasts on the motion vet’s grizzled persona.
Much more spectacular is the best way he handles the film’s mixture of old-school sensible results and visible results for the contaminated.
The opposite factor that so usually retains Chilly Storage from feeling like a bona fide style basic is director Jonny Campbell’s method to the fabric. In relation to the horror parts of the movie, Campbell — who has primarily labored in tv for the previous 20 years on every little thing from HBO’s Westworld to Netflix’s Dracula — proves himself the proper alternative, taking a uniquely intimate method to exhibiting how the an infection spreads each inside the physique and a close-by space.
Much more spectacular is the best way he handles the film’s mixture of old-school sensible results and visible results for mentioned contaminated, making every little thing really feel appropriately disgusting and visceral to observe. It would not get far more horrific than seeing a cat with inexperienced fungus popping out of a gap in its head, then ramming mentioned head into an antenna earlier than exploding right into a cloud of guts and different types of viscera.
However what Campbell makes up for in fashionable POV photographs and brutal results, he finds himself missing a correct sense of power for Chilly Storage. Most of the scenes not involving the parasitic fungus really feel like they’re missing any type of visually participating method to the purpose it nearly feels just like the film begins to pull on and will get tepid.
Additional emblematic of the film’s troublesome tonal mixing is the best way he directs the scenes involving Ellora Torchia’s Abigail in a U.S. army scenario room. Taking a handheld method that mixes distance photographs with close-ups, Campbell nearly feels as if he is striving for one thing alongside the strains of Kathryn Bigelow’s A Home of Dynamite, which simply would not fairly gel with the tongue-in-cheek horror tone the remainder of the film delivers.
Regardless of a lot of its foibles, Chilly Storage is not totally a wasted effort. Koepp’s script is lots humorous and delivers precisely what one expects from its style trappings, even when additionally taking a contact too lengthy to get to a much bigger sense of pressure with its 99-minute runtime. Neeson and Campbell are clearly having a blast with their characters, and Keery additionally delivers one other enjoyable, fast-talking character to please Stranger Issues followers searching for their subsequent enjoyable watch.
Chilly Storage hits theaters on Friday.
- Launch Date
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February 13, 2026
- Runtime
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99 minutes
- Director
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Jonny Campbell
- Writers
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David Koepp
- Producers
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David Koepp, Gavin Polone
Solid
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Georgina Campbell
Naomi Williams
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- The idea makes for some old style sci-fi horror thrills.
- The consequences of the contaminated are largely stellar and horrific.
- Georgina Campbell and Liam Neeson are having a blast, whereas Joe Keery is a stable sufficient s goofball.
- Jonny Campbell’s path is lots fashionable.
- A number of the CGI will get a bit dicey.
- Campbell’s path additionally lacks a sure power to provide the flim extra zip.
- The plot by no means strives to be greater than what’s on the floor.