That was pretty silly. But an enjoyable kind of silly.

A highly contagious, fatal fungus from space is sealed within a forgotten military bunker. But when it starts to break out, hapless heroes have to save the world.

Cold Storage, directed by Jonny Campbell, stars Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), Joe Keery (Stranger Things) and Liam Neeson (The Naked Gun sequel in 2025). It is also written by David Koepp, screenwriter for 2026’s Spielberg sci-fi Disclosure Day and thriller Black Bag. Director Campbell is more associated with television, with this being a feature film debut.

Should this remain in storage, or is it worth your time?

The film opens perhaps on its weakest note. It begins with the unlikely scenario that there was a laboratory in orbit in the early 70s with hazardous material on board. This laboratory came crashing to Earth in 1975, and the US Government couldn’t retrieve all the pieces. In time, one of the pieces was making local news as a tourist attraction. “Pay Attention! This is real!” screams the movie in big letters.
Now, this certainly is the sign that the film is not real. The fact that the Government couldn’t find all these debris but overlooked someone advertising some as a tourist attraction? Is absurd. But it doesn’t lean into this. Before we know it, people are climbing buildings and exploding with spores. Cordyceps-style.

The deadly fungus from inside the debris is sealed away in a bunker. But lo, even more shameful US Government negligence: the site was buried and eventually converted into a public storage company. It is weirdly played out flatly; not with outspoken humour. It is strange.
The film follows two young workers at the storage company, Travis (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell) as they uncover the unsettling secret within their walls.

The film is a shorter one, running at one hour and forty minutes. But it is surprising what someone can do with just one hundred minutes. The story is straight-forward; it isn’t going to cause epiphany, it isn’t a ground-breaking monster movie, or laugh-out-loud comedy. However, it is a fun time at the movies. A decent distraction.

Campbell and Keery are pleasant enough to follow through the story. They aren’t the cookie-cutter movie couple, they aren’t even typical horror-movie fodder. The pair have their own hang-ups, history, and agency. Just enough to keep us invested, but not enough to slow down the film’s intent: to have a sci-fi virus outbreak. With them is Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville (The Crown) as two military clean-up officers tasked to deal with the outbreak. These two are excellent, somewhat unsurprisingly. Although if you want to see Neeson doing his Taken thing, you might want to lower your expectations.

The special effects are mostly CGI, which certainly aren’t terrible. The film’s low scale chaos works with the lower budget. There are some nice CGI/make-up work which sells the disgusting nature of the virus. There’s a good sense of scale and place, with much of the movie taking place in this small storage company building.
Perhaps the biggest gripe, asides from its generally “good enough” nature, is its licensed music. Some really generic choices here that made me roll my eyes. Have we reached a point where this is getting tiresome? How often do we need to hear “One Way or Another” by Blondie in a film?

There isn’t a great deal more to say about it. It is a fun time overall. The characters are likeable enough that the peril is convincing enough. Despite how silly it is, it isn’t outstaying its welcome or bombarding us with overexaggerated caricatures of human beings.

If you want a light sci-fi movie with horror elements, and are comfortable with the premise post-Covid, you can do worse than watch Cold Storage.