This adaptation of David Koepp’s 2019 novel takes the “sporror” premise, fungal body horror with a side of laughs, and runs with it like Tremors meets Shaun of the Dead, swapping desert worms for oozing mycological nightmares.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Director Jonny Campbell
The setup is brilliantly simple. Teacake (Joe Keery) and Naomi (Georgina Campbell) are night-shift security guards at a sprawling self-storage warehouse in middle-of-nowhere America. Their biggest challenges? Staying awake during twelve-hour shifts and pretending to care about clipboard protocols. The facility’s mundane veneer hides a sinister secret: it’s constructed over a decommissioned military sublevel where, decades ago, something fungal and lethal was sealed away. What they discover is a parasitic organism that doesn’t just kill its hosts; it hijacks them, grows through them.
Director Jonny Campbell takes his time establishing the tedium of overnight warehouse work, the bad coffee, the endless corridors, the soul-crushing repetitiveness, before cranking the tension dial to eleven. That slow build makes the chaos feel earned rather than rushed, and the shift from boredom to life-or-death stakes feels genuinely unsettling.
Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell: Chemistry Under Pressure
Keery, best known for playing Steve Harrington in Stranger Things, brings his trademark charm to Teacake, a slacker with a heart of gold who’d rather crack jokes than follow protocol. His performance is effortlessly likeable, mining humor from the absurdity of the situation without undermining the genuine horror. There’s a scene where he attempts to rationalize the fungus outbreak using stoner logic that lands perfectly, equal parts hilarious and horrifying.
Campbell, fresh off her acclaimed turn in Barbarian, plays Naomi as the grounded counterbalance to Teacake’s chaos. She’s competent, skeptical, and deeply unwilling to die in a storage facility.The duo’s dynamic carries the film through its rougher patches. Even when the plot threatens to lose momentum, their constant back-and-forth keeps things engaging.
Added to the mix Major Quinn (Liam Neeson), a government operative pulled out of retirement to contain the outbreak. Neeson, typically cast as an action-hero badass, plays completely against type here, and it’s glorious. Quinn is competent, yes, but he’s also old, tired, and suffering from chronic back problems that make every heroic move a Herculean effort.
There’s a standout sequence where Quinn attempts to sprint toward danger but has to stop halfway through to stretch his lower back. It’s the kind of physical comedy you’d never expect from Neeson, but showcased in last years ‘The Naked Gun’ reboot here to great affect. Neeson also here delivers the exposition dumps, about the fungus’s origins, its terrifying capabilities, with a weary professionalism that suggests he’s explained this a thousand times before. The character could’ve been a cliché, but Neeson’s performance elevates him into something memorably deadpan.
The Supporting Cast: Horror Royalty
The supporting ensemble is stacked with talent. Vanessa Redgrave and Lesley Manville appear as residents of a nearby retirement community who get caught in the fungal crossfire. Both veteran actresses bring unexpected pathos to roles that could’ve been throwaway. Manville, in particular, has a scene-stealing moment involving a walking frame and a Molotov cocktail that’s destined for gif immortality.
Sosie Bacon rounds out the cast as a CDC specialist racing against time to stop the outbreak from spreading beyond the facility. Her role is more functional than flashy, but Bacon brings enough urgency to make the stakes feel real.
Body Horror Meets Comedy: A Delicate Balance
Campbell’s direction walks a tightrope between visceral body horror and laugh-out-loud comedy, and remarkably, it rarely stumbles. The practical effects are outstanding, heads split open like overripe melons, fungal tendrils burst through skin, and the creature design is genuinely unsettling. The film doesn’t shy away from gore, but it’s never gratuitous. Every gross-out moment serves the story.
The comedy, meanwhile, comes from character rather than cheap gags. The humor emerges organically from people reacting realistically to insane circumstances. When Teacake suggests they “just lock the doors and pretend we didn’t see anything,” it’s funny because it’s exactly what most people would think.
That said, the film’s commitment to lightness occasionally undercuts genuine tension. Characters are rarely in sustained danger, and the third act’s climax feels somewhat predictable. You can see the “big explosion” ending coming from miles away, and while it’s executed with impressive technical polish, it lacks surprise.
Technical Execution: Practical Effects Shine
The film’s greatest technical achievement is its effects work. Practical effects form the foundation, with digital enhancements adding polish rather than replacing physicality entirely. The fungus itself, a writhing, pulsating mass of organic nightmare fuel, looks tangible in a way CGI creations often don’t.
There’s a particularly memorable set piece involving a storage unit full of infected furniture that comes alive, sprouting fungal appendages and attacking our heroes. It’s Evil Dead II levels of creative carnage, and the effects team deserves enormous credit for making it look both horrifying and darkly comic.
The Verdict: Sporror Done Right
Cold Storage isn’t trying to reinvent horror-comedy. It’s working within familiar genre frameworks, the isolated location, the ragtag survivors, the ticking-clock urgency. But it executes those tropes with enough style, humor, and genuine affection for the material that it feels fresh anyway. The practical effects are top-tier, the pacing is confident, and the script finds humor in places you wouldn’t expect.
Is it scary? Occasionally. Is it funny? Frequently. Is it a perfect film? No: the stakes sag in the third act, and some plot beats feel overly familiar. But it’s enormously entertaining, and in an era of self-serious horror, that counts for a lot.
If you enjoyed Tremors, The Blob, or any horror-comedy that prioritizes character over carnage (while still delivering plenty of carnage), Cold Storage is absolutely worth your time. Just maybe skip the mushroom pizza afterward.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Cold Storage is now showing in UK cinemas. For more reviews of this week’s releases, check out our coverage of Wuthering Heights and explore our full Reviews section.
