Will Storage 24 make you go ‘MAH!’ or ‘meh’?
Storage 24 is like a toothpick. Or a biro. Or, to a certain extent, a baby. It is just another product of an efficient manufacturing process that copies the design of its predecessors, tweaking it marginally with superficial packaging to make it seem like you are getting something original.
That is not to say that this claustrophobic monster movie is defective. It’s just that something this rigorously generic can only aspire to receiving the mildest of approvals from those unable to get into sold-out showings of The Amazing Spider-Man this week. And this group is probably going to make up most of its audience.
It opens with a plane crash in London, the debris of which is shown scattered around a 24 hour storage facility. The disaster plays havoc with the security systems, trapping several people inside. It soon becomes apparent that they are not alone, as the top secret extra terrestrial cargo of the plane is revealed to be intent on picking off the accidentally incarcerated youngsters one by one.
Noel Clarke stars as the disgruntled Charlie, a man who is at the storage facility to confront his ex-girlfriend over their recent split. A love triangle subplot develops and is just about able to sustain the human element of the plot. The rest of the movie is made up of characters scurrying from one identical storage cubicle to another to get away from the flailin’ alien.
The dialogue plays it safe, as does the action, which could do with being a little more coherent during some of the more frenetic sequences. Perhaps the best aspect of the movie is its use of real creature costumes and animatronics for the otherworldly monster, since CGI would have been too expensive and is entirely unnecessary in this context.
A side effect of this is that the film feels like it could have been made anytime between 1960 and 2012. Modern technology also plays virtually no part, shoring up comparisons with its venerable precursors like Alien and Predator.
This old fashioned approach is more refreshing than any arbitrary integration of social networking or Instagram might have been. And as a lo-fi horror, Storage 24 is inoffensive and enjoyable without being able to offer prolonged fun.
