1 week ago
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“Stranger Things” heartthrob Joe Keery has a long history of fighting aliens in the American Midwest, and “Barbarian” breakout Georgina Campbell knows a thing or two about renting spooky spaces in a horror movie. But as co-workers in “Cold Storage,” a jumpy new sci-fi comedy from director Jonny Campbell set inside a public storage unit in Kansas, the leads offer more than the sum of their resumes.
From StudioCanal, this surprising crowdpleaser isn’t strictly speaking a rom-com, despite arriving in theaters on February 13. The presence of Liam Neeson as a grizzled government scientist firmly nudges David Koepp’s script more toward horror-action than horror-romance, but flirty banter is still an essential linchpin in the screenwriter’s simple, effective adaptation of his own graphic novel. The result is a single-location gross-out adventure that finds its best beats in Keery and Campbell’s fizzy chemistry, and an intergalactic parasite that possesses its victims’ minds — before making their bodies literally explode.
Teacake (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell) are night-shift employees at a storage facility built on top of an old U.S. military base. That’s an impressive indictment of poor zoning restrictions, and when a parasitic fungus escapes from the lowest sublevel, sealed by the government long ago for obvious reasons, rising temperatures wake the microorganism from a deep sleep. What follows is a quickly escalating mess of mutation that smartly expands zombie mythology, while keeping its own world grounded and small.
The best horror movies understand how to refurbish ideas we’ve seen before, and “Cold Storage” does that without straining its salesmanship or sense of novelty. This isn’t the first time a deadly fungus has taken over Earth (“The Last of Us”), nor is it the first time an alien microorganism has pushed people to do unspeakable things (“Bird Box”). Koepp commingles those dark ideas and somehow lightens the mood, landing on a story that’s tonally closer to “Ghostbusters” than “The Thing.”
“Cold Storage”Reiner BajoA house cat commits suicide by ramming its own head through a radio antenna. Human victims impacted turn on themselves and then survivors in a battle that never leaves the building’s grounds rapidly grows in its apocalyptic scale. The cartoonish digital effects skew gooey over grim, and “Cold Storage” lets its performers respond to that excess with a believability that ensures Naomi and Teacake are compelling even when the core mystery’s suspense starts to slip. When the going gets tough, they try to bail — and that should be relatable enough to anyone who’s ever been paid by the hour.
Playing another affable himbo who’s wiser and kinder than he looks, Keery continues to double-down on the kind of performances that have defined his post-“Stranger Things” career. Misguided but not indifferent, Teacake oozes the vague philosophical curiosity of a man who might accidentally save the world, and while the character never tips into outright parody, the role feels like a blueprint for something even more ludicrous for Keery down the line. His presence injects a scrappy likability that makes you root for the entire operation, and watching Keery wander through aggressively bright hallways that would swallow an unknown, he holds focus and underlines how crucial casting can be to an indie’s success.
Meanwhile, Campbell offers a peppier version of herself than audiences have come to expect, but she sinks comfortably into her character. The “straight man” to Keery’s Teacake, Naomi is observant and emotionally present without dragging her scene partner’s energy down. When Naomi’s ex-boyfriend Mike (Aaron Heffernan) shows up to her shift and falls victim to the spreading fungus, she is forced to save the planet while watching him morph beyond recognition. We’ve seen Campbell witness a love interest get destroyed by a monster with heavier anguish (hello again, “Barbarian”), but her restraint here lets Naomi feel as “real” as the street-smart Teacake without fighting the film’s lighter cues.
“Cold Storage” That dimensionality extends to much of the supporting cast, including Dr. Hero Martins (“Smile” icon Sosie Bacon) who, in a flashback from an incident 18 years prior, induces chills by giving a clinical description of victims’ skin and skulls bursting as the parasite worked its way in to their systems. The “Cold Storage” introduction uses that background to establish real stakes, before the movie pivots back to comedy and the realism smartly persists. Property manager Griffin (Gavin Spokes) is predictably awful as Teacake and Naomi’s boss, but he becomes genuinely unsettling when his eyes light up at the possibility of an “active shooter” on the premises. It’s a grimly funny misunderstanding that lands because a recognizable character can’t wait to get into a nightmare he only thinks he knows.
Neeson’s role as retired DTRA agent Robert Quinn is adequate but forgettable. Although the “Taken” legend’s presence lends a sense of legitimacy to the movie’s government trappings, his arc never lives up to the promise of a microscopic foe that makes people spontaneously combust. His rousing speeches and phone-bound communication with a younger operative (Ellora Torchia) don’t carry the weight or sentimentality the film seems to want them to, especially stacked against the visceral strength of the opening. But when Quinn and his old colleague Trini Romano (Lesley Manville) finally meet Naomi and Teacake on the ground in the present day, the movie’s energy snaps into place and mostly stays put.
“Cold Storage” benefits from being Koepp’s second pass on a story he already understands intrinsically. Among the most commercially successful screenwriters of all time, his experience shines through in a pared-down universe that functions like a lit display case for punchy dialogue and unexpected choices. When an infected attacker snarls, “Open your mouth. I want to throw up in it,” it’s clear the “War of the Worlds” and “Jurassic Park” screenwriter knows not just what movie he’s making but how audiences see many core genre concepts in 2026.
The director proves savvy enough to let Koepp’s writing do the heavy lifting, capturing the blankness of the storage facility as a comic canvas that favors clarity of performance over familiar, muddy dread. Bird’s-eye compositions and dynamic lighting support tonal gambits that might otherwise curdle, including a memorable appearance by Vanessa Redgrave as an elderly widow visiting her unit with a handgun on her late husband’s death anniversary. The concept would be scarier and sadder in the dark, but the plot’s playfulness pairs well with fluorescent glare. You might wish more effects were practical in that context, but even digitally rendered, Campbell and Koepp deliver more than you bargain for.
As a February release (traditionally considered part of horror’s offseason), “Cold Storage” is an especially pleasant surprise. With Keery and Campbell making it an event worthy of theaters, the film occupies a shrinking middle ground as a mid-budget genre effort that isn’t chasing franchise immortality — or apologizing for audiences’ time-tested affection for silliness. Think “Goosebumps” for adults behind a padlock and accordion door: weird, messy, and a genuinely good time once you crack it open.
Grade: B+
From StudioCanal, “Cold Storage” is in theaters on February 13.
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