Cold Storage (2026) Samuel Goldwyn/Horror-Comedy RT: 99 minutes Rated R (violent content, gore, language) Director: Jonny Campbell Screenplay: David Koepp Music: Mathieu Lamboley Cinematography: Tony Slater Ling Release date: February 13, 2026 (US) Cast: Georgina Campbell, Joe Keery, Liam Neeson, Lesley Manville, Sosie Bacon, Vanessa Redgrave, Aaron Heffernan, Ellora Torchia, Richard Brake, Gavin Spokes, Andrew Brooke, Rob Collins, Darrell D’Silva, Clare Holman, Nahna James, Lujza Richter, Daniel Rigby, Justin Salinger, Valentina Popkova.
Rating: ***
The most surprising thing in the new horror-comedy Cold Storage isn’t on the screen, but behind it. The screenplay was written by David Koepp, the A-lister behind blockbusters like Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and War of the World (2005). He also penned the last two Indiana Jones movies. What drove him to write this one, a full-fledged B-movie? It could be because he also wrote the novel on which it’s based.
Cold Storage is going to remind a lot of people of The Return of the Living Dead (1985). It has a similar premise. Two employees of a storage facility make a horrifying discovery and spent the rest of the night fighting off “zombies”. I use the term in quotes because technically they’re people infected by a mutated fungus that turns them into murderous ghouls. There’s no brain munching, but it’s still pretty gnarly. And it has Liam Neeson.
The plot of Cold Storage is founded on the real-life breakup and descent of the Skylab space station in 1979. Most of the debris ended up in the Indian Ocean. One piece, an oxygen tank containing the fungus, a man-made pathogen mutated by the extreme conditions in space, lands in Western Australia. A farmer finds it and puts it on public display.
Several years later, the fungus (it’s alive!) finds its way out of the tank and kills everybody in the area. A biochemist (Bacon, Smile) and military operatives Robert and Trini (Ordinary Love co-stars Neeson and Lesley Manville) go to investigate. They manage to collect and trap it, but not before it makes its way into the biochemist’s bloodstream and infects her.
The sample is taken to a Kansas government facility and sealed in an underground cold storage vault. In the years that follow, the facility is shut down and the property is turned into a self-storage warehouse. On the night the s*** hits the fan, “loquacious” ex-con Tea Cake (Keery, Stranger Things) and single mom Naomi (Campbell, Barbarian) are the staffers on duty. They hear an alarm beeping and track down the source to the cold storage unit hidden behind the wall. It’s an alert that something’s gone wrong. And it has, horribly wrong.
Long story short, the fungus has gotten out and it’s already infecting people like Naomi’s man-child ex (Heffernan, Bring Them Down) and a dead pet cat. An alert goes out to the now-retired Robert. The military needs him to deal with the situation in Kansas. He’s been warning the Pentagon for years of the danger imposed by the fungus. Naturally, they just covered it up instead. He doesn’t have a lot of support from the higher-ups. The only one willing to help him with his mission is a young officer who calls herself “Abigail” (Torchia, Ali & Ava).
Directed by Brit filmmaker Jonny Campbell (Alien Autopsy), Cold Storage is great fun. Goofy and gross, it never once takes itself seriously. Even better, everybody is in on the gag, even Liam. I often refer to him as the new Charles Bronson and he is when it comes to straight-up action movies. However, he has something the Death Wish star didn’t, a flair for comedy. He’s legitimately funny without trying too hard. He gets laughs by playing it totally straight in the face of absurdity. He doesn’t turn his square-jawed military fixer into an exaggerated caricature, but still keeps his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. He knows it’s a goof but isn’t about to let on that he knows it.
The cast does a very good job. Keery might as well make a career out of fighting monsters. He did it for five seasons on Stranger Things. He does it again in Cold Storage. His character Tea Cake, so named for his favorite snack food, is a lazy stoner type trying to go straight after a stint in prison for being in the wrong place in the wrong time. This job as an overnight security guard is a last chance-type deal. He doesn’t want to mess it up. That’s going to be kind of hard considering what lies ahead for him and his colleague, newbie Naomi. She’s the more pragmatic of the pair, the one who knows when to stop and listen. In the role, Campbell does a fine job. She imbues her character with grit and street smarts. Vanessa Redgrave (Mission: Impossible), of all people, shows up as an elderly customer who isn’t afraid of a few zombified bikers.
The effects in Cold Storage are pretty good despite being CGI. The fungus is this green, tendrilly stuff that instantly affects its victims upon contact. Humans and animals are susceptible to it. They go murderously insane until they literally explode. It gets pretty gross but in a cool way.
I got a real kick out of Cold Storage. Watching it, I was taken back to my misspent youth in the 80s when I lived for silly horror movies like this. I had a silly smile plastered on my face the whole time. This is a good sign and a ringing endorsement from yours truly.
