Cold Storage Review: Joe Keery and Liam Neeson Take On a Killer Fungus in a Gooey B-Movie Throwback

David Koepp has spent more than three decades writing some of the biggest blockbusters around, from Jurassic Park to Spider-Man and War of the Worlds. With Cold Storage, he goes back to something much smaller and much messier: a fungus-fuelled horror comedy adapted from his own 2019 novel, directed by Jonny Campbell (Dracula) and produced by Zombieland’s Gavin Polone. It reached US theaters through Samuel Goldwyn Films on February 13, 2026, with StudioCanal handling Europe, and it wraps everything up in just under 100 minutes.

The setup is simple. A parasitic fungus that hitched a ride back to Earth on a piece of the Skylab space station has been locked away in a sealed vault beneath an old military base in Kansas. Years later, the base above it is a self-storage facility, and the only people on duty when the vault starts to warm up are two night-shift workers, Teacake (Joe Keery) and Naomi (Georgina Campbell). Their only lifeline is Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson), the retired bioterror operative who contained the fungus the first time. Here’s the full breakdown across our five categories (2 points maximum each).

Cold Storage Story – 1.5/2

Good Points: A Ticking Clock That Never Stops Ticking

One Night, One Building, One Very Bad Fungus
Koepp knows exactly how to build a contained thriller, and Cold Storage gets most of its mileage from a ticking clock that starts in the first act and never lets up. The organism spreads faster as the temperature underground rises, Quinn is hours away, and the two people standing between it and the surface are a pair of underpaid night-shift workers who just wanted a quiet evening. The prologue, which shows what this fungus did to the people who first found it, sets the stakes brutally enough that every beep from the facility’s alarm system carries real weight afterwards.

A Story That Splits in Two
The script cuts between Teacake and Naomi inside the facility and Quinn’s race back to Kansas, where his old partner Trini Romano (Lesley Manville) is waiting. Quinn’s half adds a welcome dose of history, guilt, and military incompetence, and the film’s quiet jabs at bureaucracy and buried secrets are some of its sharpest writing.

Where It Falls Short
That split is also the story’s biggest weakness. Quinn spends so much of the runtime on the road that the storage facility, the most interesting location in the movie, sometimes feels underused, and the finale wraps things up a little too neatly for a film that had been happily chaotic up to that point. It’s a fun ride, just not a surprising one.

Cold Storage Cast – 1.5/2

Good Points: Keery and Campbell Carry the Night Shift

Teacake and Naomi
Joe Keery is doing a slightly older, slightly more tired version of the fast-talking charm that made Steve Harrington a Stranger Things favorite, and it fits Teacake perfectly. Georgina Campbell, who already proved she can survive a horror movie basement in Barbarian, gives Naomi a grounded, no-nonsense edge, and the two have an easy chemistry that makes their flirty banter between fungus attacks genuinely enjoyable.

Neeson, Manville, and Redgrave
Liam Neeson plays Quinn as a worn-out man who knows exactly how bad this is going to get, and his scenes with Lesley Manville have a dry, bickering rhythm that feels like two old colleagues who have been through too much together. Vanessa Redgrave steals a handful of scenes as Ma Rooney, a storage client who turns out to be far more useful in a crisis than anyone expected.

Where It Falls Short
For a cast this stacked, some of the talent is spread thin. Sosie Bacon makes a strong impression in the prologue and then disappears, and Neeson is kept away from the main action for so long that his presence often feels more like a promise than a payoff.

Cold Storage World – 1.5/2

Good Points: A Storage Facility Is the Perfect Horror Playground

Endless Corridors and Locked Doors
A self-storage complex built on top of a forgotten military bunker is a brilliant horror location. Rows of identical roll-up doors, flickering corridors, and a sealed sub-level nobody is supposed to know about give the film a claustrophobic, maze-like feel, and the contrast between the dull, fluorescent ground floor and the cold military vault below is used well.

Gross, Practical, and Proud of It
The infected are where Cold Storage really leans into its B-movie roots. Pulsing fungal growths, twitching hosts, swollen animals, and a mutant reindeer that has to be seen to be believed give the outbreak a tactile, slimy texture that feels like a love letter to 1980s creature features.

Where It Falls Short
Outside the facility, the world feels thinner. The roads, homes, and military offices Quinn passes through are functional but forgettable, and the film never quite delivers the sense of a whole country on the brink that the premise promises.

Music Score and Effects – 1.5/2

Composer Mathieu Lamboley’s score walks the same line as the movie itself, building tension in the vault scenes while leaving room for the film’s mischievous comedic side. It does its job without ever becoming something you’ll hum after the credits, which fits a movie that cares more about momentum than mood.

The effects work is a mixed but mostly entertaining bag. The gooey practical makeup and splatter are the highlight, and the bursting-body moments land with exactly the kind of sticky crunch horror fans will want. When the film switches to more digital work for the larger fungal growths and the big finale, the seams show more clearly, and some of the CG looks noticeably cheaper than the practical effects around it.

Originality – 1/2

How It Stands Apart / Uniqueness

Setting a fungal outbreak inside a self-storage facility, and tying its origin to the real-life fall of Skylab, is a clever twist on a familiar idea. The tone, which swings between dry workplace comedy and full-on body horror without ever taking itself too seriously, also gives Cold Storage a personality of its own in a genre that often defaults to grim.

The problem is everything around that hook. Parasitic fungi that take over their hosts are hardly new territory after The Last of Us, and outbreak horror is having a big year with Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil. The beats here, the doomed prologue, the cover-up, the race to the source, the last-minute heroics, follow the outbreak movie formula very closely. Cold Storage is a stylish remix of influences rather than something genuinely fresh, which is why it lands at half marks here.

What’s Next for Cold Storage and David Koepp?

Cold Storage had a quiet run in theaters, earning under $4 million at the worldwide box office, but it found a second life at home, where it climbed the digital charts after release. In the UK, StudioCanal released it on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 11, 2026, including a limited HMV-exclusive 4K edition capped at 1,000 copies.

As of now, no sequel has been announced. The film wraps up its outbreak cleanly, so any return to the facility would need a brand-new idea. Koepp himself has already moved on in a big way: he wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, which reached theaters on June 12, 2026, and followed it to digital and disc over the summer. For Joe Keery, Georgina Campbell, and Liam Neeson, Cold Storage is best seen as a fun genre detour rather than the start of a franchise.

Gamersuniverse Score:

7 out of 10 stars⭐

Cold Storage is exactly the kind of movie its poster promises: a gooey, quippy, splatter-heavy B-movie with an A-list cast that clearly had a great time making it. Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell make an instantly likable duo, the self-storage facility is a fantastic horror playground, and the practical gore gives the outbreak a satisfyingly gross bite.

It loses points for a story that keeps cutting away from its best location, a Liam Neeson who arrives late to his own party, CG effects that don’t match the practical work, and a plot that follows the outbreak movie formula a little too faithfully. If you want a fun, gross late-night watch with friends, Cold Storage delivers. Just don’t expect Koepp’s next Jurassic Park.

Score Summary

• Story: 1.5/2
• Cast: 1.5/2
• World: 1.5/2
• Music Score and Effects: 1.5/2
• Originality: 1/2
  Total: 7/10

Have you seen Cold Storage yet? Would you survive a night shift at that storage facility? Let us know in the comments.

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Pictures: Samuel Goldwyn Films, StudioCanal