Cold Storage

There is a specific kind of anxiety that comes with watching a "contained" thriller while your own living room feels like a pressurized cabin. I caught Cold Storage on a Tuesday night while my neighbor was outside power-washing his driveway at 10:00 PM; the aggressive, rhythmic thrum of the water against the pavement ended up providing a bizarrely perfect industrial soundtrack to a film that is essentially about things leaking where they shouldn't. It’s the kind of mid-budget genre exercise we keep hearing is "dead" in the age of the $200 million franchise, yet here it is, gooey and unapologetic.

Despite a pedigree that includes a script by David Koepp (the man who literally gave us the cinematic language of Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible), Cold Storage somehow slipped through the cracks of the 2026 release calendar. It’s a victim of what I call the "Post-Pandemic Fungus Fatigue." After The Last of Us conquered the world, audiences seemed a bit allergic to stories about spores. But honestly? They missed out on a riotous, slightly mean-spirited survival horror that understands exactly how much fun a biological apocalypse can be when it's confined to a single, decaying facility.

Spores, Snark, and a Very Grumpy Liam Neeson

The premise is pure 80s throwback: a prehistoric, highly adaptive fungus is accidentally unleashed in a military storage facility. Enter Joe Keery as Travis 'Teacake' Meacham and Georgina Campbell as Naomi Williams. Joe Keery continues to corner the market on "charming slackers who are way out of their depth," while Georgina Campbell—who solidified her horror-queen status in Barbarian—provides the necessary steel. Their chemistry isn't about romance; it's about the shared trauma of realizing their HR department definitely didn't cover "sentient mold" in the orientation video.

Then there’s Liam Neeson. If you think you’ve seen every iteration of the "Neeson with a grudge" character, his turn as Robert Quinn might surprise you. He’s playing a disgraced bioterror operative, and he’s leaning into a cynical, dark comedy vibe that we rarely see from him these days. Liam Neeson is officially in his ‘I’ll do anything for a paycheck as long as I can carry a flamethrower’ era, and honestly, I’m here for it. He brings a weary gravity to the absurdity, treating the world-ending fungus with the same annoyance one might reserve for a persistent telemarketer.

A Masterclass in Practical Gross-Outs

Director Jonny Campbell (who showed us he could handle atmospheric dread in the Dracula miniseries) avoids the trap of over-relying on CGI. In a contemporary landscape where monsters often feel like weightless pixels, the fungus in Cold Storage feels wet. It feels heavy. It looks like something that would actually ruin your shoes and then your life. The creature design—if you can call a mutating mass of mycelium a creature—is genuinely unsettling, especially when it starts interacting with the human anatomy in ways that would make David Cronenberg nod in approval.

The cinematography by Tony Slater Ling uses the cramped corridors of the facility to create a sense of mounting claustrophobia, but the film never loses its sense of humor. David Koepp’s screenplay (adapting his own 2019 novel) is peppered with the kind of sharp, rhythmic dialogue that reminded me why he’s a legend. He knows when to let the tension simmer and when to break it with a well-timed quip from Lesley Manville, who shows up and absolutely eats the scenery as a high-level official trying to manage the chaos.

Why Did This Disappear?

It’s frustrating to see a film this competent—and this fun—get buried. Cold Storage was produced by StudioCanal and had a modest $10 million budget, yet it barely scratched $3.5 million at the box office. Why? It likely suffered from a lack of a clear "hook" for the social media age. It’s not a sequel, it’s not part of a cinematic universe, and it’s not "elevated horror" in the way A24 fans usually demand. It’s just a damn good B-movie with A-list talent.

Apparently, the production was plagued by the very thing it was filming; a minor mold outbreak in the Moroccan filming location actually shut down the set for a week. You can almost feel that authentic frustration bleeding into the performances. There's also a persistent rumor that Sosie Bacon, who plays Dr. Hero Martins, had to spend four hours a day in a makeup chair for a sequence that was eventually trimmed to less than two minutes of screen time. It’s that kind of detail—the stuff we don't see—that often gives these smaller films their texture.

Cold Storage is a reminder that you don't need a multiverse to save the world; sometimes you just need a couple of terrified night-shift workers and a very grumpy Irishman. It balances the "ick" factor with genuine laughs, and while it doesn't reinvent the wheel, it spins it with incredible confidence. If you’re looking for a tight, 99-minute thriller that honors the practical effects of the past while poking fun at the bureaucratic nightmares of the present, hunt this one down. Just maybe don't eat any mushrooms while you watch it.