Film Review: ‘Cold Storage’

Cold Storage is the film adaptation of the 2019 science fiction book of the same name. Both were written by author and screenwriter David Koepp.

The film begins with an ‘eighteen years previously’ flashback back sequence. Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson) and Trini Romano (Lesley Manville) travel to Australia to contain and destroy all but a single sample of a lethal and highly adaptable fungus. The sample is stored in an underground military facility, safe, until the building is sold and turned into a regular storage facility by the time of the present day. This is problematic when the super-fast spreading fungus breaks containment and Robert must rely on minimum wage security guards Teacake (Joe Keery) and Naomi (Georgina Campbell) to help him save the day.

It is worth mentioning that Cold Storage (both book and film) is also in part a dark comedy with deliberately over-the-top gore in places and plenty of hilarious yet entirely justifiable reactions from Teacake and Naomi as the night’s events unfold. The upbeat music choices in the film, such as Blondie’s ‘One Way or Another’, perfectly juxtapose the serious, world ending threat at the heart of the story.

In terms of being a book-to-film adaptation, Cold Storage was incredibly accurate. I spotted a couple of small changes to the plot, such as the initial flashback sequence being only eighteen years in the past rather than thirty to avoid recasting for those scenes, but none of those changes took anything away from the original story. The one big change came from the expansion of solider Abigail’s role (Ellora Torchia) who, in the book, appears only as a voice on the phone as she assists the team but the film was able to show lots of scenes from her perspective which I loved.

Some elements, such as the chapters told from the fungus’ point of view, understandably could not convey the same level of detail when translated from page to screen but the film still referenced these chapters through visual sequences that showed how the fungus infected living creatures to aid the viewer’s understanding. This mostly faithful adaptation was likely due in large part to Koepp’s involvement.

Georgina Campbell and Joe Keery’s casting as Naomi and Teacake was perfect. The pair were completely believable together as the unlikely world-saving duo and they fully embodied their characters; from Naomi’s curiosity and determination to Teacake overcoming his fear to keep his friend safe from harm. The character of Robert Quinn was renamed from Roberto Diaz in the book to match with Liam Neeson’s casting. While I’m curious which actor might have played Roberto I honestly can’t imagine anyone better for the role of Robert than Neeson. With both a commanding presence and the occasional dry line delivery, Neeson’s performance matched the tone of the film brilliantly. Paired with Lesley Manville to create the story’s other iconic duo, Manville wonderfully captured Trini’s sarcasm and unflappable nature from the book. The scene where Trini and Robert attempt to sneak ‘Item 7’ out of her son’s basement without being seen was one of my favourite moments in the film.

As a fan of the book, the Cold Storage film is everything I hoped it would be. The film finds a great balance between the serious and the silly and kept me entertained throughout. With fantastic casting and an easy to follow story I’m very happy that Cold Storage got the big screen treatment.

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