COLD STORAGE

Although there's some nice on-screen chemistry between Keery and Campbell, there isn't much more positivity to share around. This probably would have been more of a success if it hadn't been relying on a few chuckles and instead offered the audience proper belly laughs (I'm thinking back to 'Evolution' or even 'Mars Attacks!'). For all the situational absurdity, we only get a few moments where we're fully able to relish it. Perhaps also a convenience of the plot, but the location actually becomes a hindrance to the storytelling; Teacake and Naomi are trapped, they manage to get out, and then have to go back in to save the world. With David Koepp ('Jurassic Park', 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny') working on a screenplay based on his own novel, this material appears to have been more successful in book form. It feels as though everything is happening within a snow globe, while at some point, you wish they'd just pick it up and smash it against the wall.

The other truly disappointing element is the visual effects. They're so integral to the story, yet overall so low-quality that they take you out of the world they're trying to build. There are a lot of tracking sequences where we might, for instance, follow the fungus as it gets caught in the tread of a shoe, works its way up through the sole, inside to the foot, onto the skin and into the bloodstream. With such detail failing to adequately capture minds and imaginations in 2026, there are certainly some concerns over director Jonny Campbell's (whose only other big screen work remarkably appears to have been 2006's 'Alien Autopsy') ambition versus budget reality.

The other point I'd make will be entirely based on your taste. There is, without doubt, an audience for this film, and they will love it all the more for it, but the gore in this film is intense. You have violently exploding body cavities, cats being impaled, deers spontaneously combusting, a man slipping through the internal parts of an infected victim... Just don't say I didn't warn you.

'Cold Storage' is an utterly forgettable affair - which is disappointing, because I went in with a little hope in my heart that it might, in fact, grab me by surprise. Sadly, all I left the cinema feeling was a wave of disappointment and a faint yearning that the final wave of destruction had occurred sooner.