Storage 24, 2012.
Directed by Johannes Roberts.
Staring Noel Clarke, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Laura Haddock, Colin O’Donoghue, Jamie Thomas King and Alex Price.
SYNOPSIS:
London is in chaos. A military cargo plane has crashed leaving its highly classified contents strewn across the city. Completely unaware that London is in lockdown, Charlie and Shelley, accompanied by best friends Mark and Nikki are at Storage 24 dividing up their possessions after a recent break-up. Suddenly, the power goes off. Trapped in a dark maze of endless corridors, a mystery predator is hunting them one by one….
Adulthood and Kidulthood creator Noel Clarke teams up with British horror filmmaker Johannes Roberts to direct Storage 24 – a movie that is the pure definition of “alright”.
The story centres around recently broken up couple Charlie and Shelley who are separately en-route to sort of out their post-break up possession swap at warehouse Storage 24. At the same time as all this, a plane has crashed nearby which has short circuited all of the power leaving them trapped over night. Little do they know however that they are not alone as an alien invasion is imminent, and they are trapped with one.
While Storage 24 isn’t inherently a bad movie, it does have several flaws. Firstly the characters (save for Charlie) are quite poorly written and in several cases poorly acted. Instead of being well-rounded characters with motivations they just come off as alien fodder who make baffling character decisions and are just there to facilitate plot points. There is a character introduced at the half way point of the movie for no reason other than to poorly give exposition. This isn’t the biggest of complaints as poor characters are almost a staple of the monster movie genre, but it does mean that an audience doesn’t care about who lives or dies.
Secondly, for a movie that is set in one confined location, Roberts does a terrible job of establishing Storage 24 as a building. As each scene rolls into the next, you feel like you’re on a new set in a new location. This again isn’t a major complaint and could be seen as a minor niggle, but part of the suspense from a confined environment is feeling enclosed and claustrophobic. Storage 24 however seems fairly open planned and non-threatening.
The alien itself is fairly decent and when it’s on screen in suitmation form it looks quite cool. It’s by no means the most original design, but it’s certainly not terrible. However there are some shots of CGI in the film which are just awful. I know the film is low budget but poor CGI in 2012 is totally inexcusable. The make-up work on the death scenes however is quite impressive and at times really creative. But this does mean that Storage 24 feels like that the writers just wrote some death scenes and then tied them loosely together with plot.
Thankfully, co-writer, producer and star Noel Clarke is here to raise the bar of the movie. While Charlie isn’t the most well-written of chaps, Clarke is such a likeable and charismatic lead that you can’t help but be won over by him. The film may not be all that great, but Clarke’s presence is enough to power you through the movie.
It sounds like I’m being really down on Storage 24 but in all honesty it’s not that bad. Clarke’s performance is great and some of the death scenes are entertaining. The film may have its flaws but overall it’s not really that bad. As I said at the start of this review, it’s the pure definition of “alright”. I wouldn’t recommend going out to buy it today at full price, but if you see a cheap copy of it or find a stream on Netflix then I’d say at least give it a chance.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Luke Owen is a freelance copywriter working for Europe’s biggest golf holiday provider as their web content executive.
