Cold Storage (2026): Don’t Fear the Reaper, Fear the Spores

When a highly dangerous fungus escapes from a secret laboratory, a former bioterrorism agent is called back into action. Alongside two young employees, he must confront an invisible and out-of-control threat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kea7gnh1uYA

I went into Cold Storage with the kind of cautious optimism usually reserved for roadside sushi . I’d heard the pitch: deadly fungus, secret government nonsense, a couple of underpaid night-shift heroes, and a seasoned fixer getting dragged back in like it’s his third farewell tour. And look - there are movie premises that practically beg to be taken seriously, and then there are premises that show up wearing a novelty hazmat suit, honking a clown horn, and whispering, “Trust me, I’m terrifying.” This one is firmly in the second category.

The setup is beautifully blunt: a highly contagious, constantly mutating organism escapes containment, and suddenly “employee handbook” problems become “species-level” problems. It’s the kind of story that works because it’s so basic you can explain it to your friend during the trailer and still have enough time to butter your popcorn like you’re frosting a wedding cake. Two young employees - Travis “Teacake” Meacham (Joe Keery) and Naomi Williams (Georgina Campbell - are basically minding their own business in a self-storage facility, which is already a surreal workplace. You’re guarding strangers’ secrets in a building full of other people’s bad decisions. And then the movie goes, “Cool, now add an extinction-level fungus.”

Enter the grown-ups with the thousand-yard stare: Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson) and Trini Romano (Lesley Manville). Their presence gives the movie that delicious “we have seen some things” energy - like the film itself is saying, “Sure, this is goofy, but the goofiness is supervised by professionals.” And that mix is where Cold Storage lives: sci-fi horror mechanics with a dark-comedy smirk, the kind of smirk that says, “Yes, we know this is disgusting. That’s why we’re doing it.”

What I liked most is how it leans into being a gnarly little throwback without pretending it’s above the party. The tone is basically: “Welcome to the apocalypse, please keep your arms and legs inside the containment breach at all times.” It’s got that creature-feature cheerfulness - campy, splattery, and self-aware - while still delivering enough “oh wow, that’s… actively repulsive” moments to earn the R rating on vibes alone. Critics keep calling it a B-movie throwback, and that’s not an insult; it’s the job description.

And yes, there are moments where it feels like the movie is winking at Joe Keery’s whole pop-culture footprint. Not in a “stop the film, point at the camera, and demand applause” way - more like the director is nudging you in the ribs and going, “You know why you’re here.” I laughed a couple times at that particular self-awareness, because it lands right in the sweet spot between “meta” and “please don’t build a cinematic universe out of this storage unit.”

Vibe-wise, I kept thinking about Evolution (2001). Same “science gone sideways” B-movie DNA, same sense that the nightmare is escalating at a tempo usually reserved for casino losses and toddler tantrums - except Cold Storage feels like Evolution’s shadier cousin who sells unmarked petri dishes behind the arcade. Evolution is the fun “what if aliens were basically cosmic slime?” ride. Cold Storage takes that energy and adds a more sinister edge, like the punchline is happening in a lab where nobody’s laughing, but everyone’s still slipping on the same ooze.

Now, let me be clear: I’m not saying Cold Storage is a profound treatise on modern life… but it does accidentally step on a couple of nerves in a way that’s almost poetic. You’ve got this idea of containment - government containment, corporate containment, emotional containment, the “I’m fine” containment we all do in public. And then you’ve got a fungus whose entire personality is basically, “Containment is adorable.” It’s hard not to watch it and think about how our world handles risk: slap a label on it, store it somewhere out of sight, hope maintenance never misses a shift, and assume nothing will ever get warm.

That said, my inner cranky moviegoer did have a few gripes. The villains (human ones) can drift into cliché territory. You can sometimes see the movie reaching into the drawer labeled “Bad Guys: Standard Issue,” pulling out the same familiar shapes. I get it - fungus is the star, humans are the side salad - but still. When the human threat feels like a checkbox, you notice. Especially because the rest of the film is having so much fun being weird and gross and inventive.

Speaking of weird: Cold Storage has a particular flavor of “why is this so specific?” humor that I really enjoyed. It’s the kind of comedy that shows up in the cracks - characters reacting to absurdity like they’re trying to keep their dignity while reality does cartwheels. It’s not nonstop jokes; it’s more like the movie’s sense of humor is hiding behind a storage locker, waiting for you to walk by, and then it trips you. That’s my preferred comedy style, because it respects the audience enough to let you catch up. (Also: life is already loud. Give me jokes that don’t scream.)

And then there’s the music. The end-credits use of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” (in cover/needle-drop form) felt like a cheeky, apocalyptic cherry on top. Now, here’s my totally personal, not-confirmed-by-anyone-with-a-badge interpretation: it played like an homage nod to The Stand’s 1990s TV miniseries vibes, because that adaptation is famously tied to the same song in its music usage. Unconfirmed? Absolutely. But the association is so strong it’s hard not to feel like the movie is waving at that corner of pop culture and going, “Hey, you. Yeah, you with the trauma from plague-fiction.”

One more piece of context that made me appreciate the whole thing a bit more: this is based on David Koepp’s 2019 novel, and the real-world seed idea traces back to Skylab’s historic reentry era - so there’s an odd little “reality-adjacent” spine under all the goo. It’s like the movie is saying, “Sure, we’re ridiculous - but we’re ridiculous with homework.”

Prediction: I can see Cold Storage becoming a “put it on at 11:30 p.m. with friends and snacks” comfort-horror pick. The premise is clean, the pace is brisk, and the whole thing is weirdly rewatchable as long as you’re in the mood for comedy that occasionally body-checks you with slime. Not every movie needs to be a cathedral. Sometimes you want a fun haunted funhouse that also happens to be built under a self-storage facility because, of course it is.

Final verdict: I’m giving Cold Storage a 7.0/10.

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