As history tells it, in 1979, the space station known as Skylab came crashing down to Earth, most of its pieces burning up during atmospheric re-entry; the pieces that actually landed on Earth were all said to have been picked up. According to the new film Cold Storage, a stray oxygen tank from Skylab was picked up by a farmer in Western Australia and he turned his discovery into a makeshift museum.
But in 2005, trouble is reported in the exact town where the farmer lives and a biochemist goes there with Pentagon bioterror operatives Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson) and Trini Romano (Lesley Manville) to retrieve the tank and assess the situation, which is grim to say the least. A strange, highly contagious fungus has escaped the tank, and while the situation is eventually contained, by the time the job is done, there are many casualties. What remains of the fungus is transported to an underground cold storage military vault at the Atchison Storage Facility in Kansas, where it is mostly forgotten but supposedly incapable of harming anyone.
Jump ahead 20 years, to the present day, when two young employees (Stranger Things’ Joe Keery as Travis and Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell as Naomi) at the storage facility (which is now a regular storage facility) stumble upon the deeply buried storage vault and discover that the fungi is once again loose and eager to spread. The discovery of the vault automatically triggers an alert at a military base nearby, which in turn calls Quinn to come back to investigate the situation. What follows is a classic B-movie, creeping-terror, mind-control scenario that finds ways to be genuinely fun without taking itself too seriously.
There’s a low-grade nuclear device with a faulty timer that Quinn asks the kids to run back into the facility to plant; there’s a classic “person in the chair” character for Quinn named Abigail (Ellora Torchia), who works at the nearby base and isn’t supposed to be helping him; there’s an infected “rat king” that must be seen to be believed; there’s Naomi’s jealous ex-boyfriend; Travis’ boss, who shows up with a biker gang to steal TVs (don’t ask); naturally, there’s a budding young romance between the two employees; and there’s even an elderly woman (Vanessa Redgrave), who has come to the vault to kill herself in her storage locker. Considering that the fate of the world is at stake, everyone takes these events pretty casually, but the fungus is truly repulsive and goopy as hell. It’s also great seeing the 73-year-old Neeson continue to have fun at this point in his career. The more serious he gets with this age-old sci-fi plotline, the funnier he is.
Cold Storage is the second feature from director Jonny Campbell, working from a screenplay by the legendary writer David Koepp (adapting his 2019 book), so I don’t think it’s an accident some of the more science-oriented material feels grounded in some amount of truth. This doesn’t keep the film from being a big goofy thrill ride at times, but it does add a bit of authenticity to the story and characters. And in a film clearly trying to generate a few laughs along the way, some heightened drama to help ground everything isn’t the worst idea.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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