Filthy Review - 'Storage 24'

Storage 24 (2012)

Review by Jude Felton

Back in 2010, director Johannes Roberts made the feisty little school invasion flick F, which is apparently now known as The Expelled. It was a vicious young sprite of a movie, and for some reason has still yet to see a release Stateside. This was followed by Roadkill, which I believe debuted on SyFy, and now he has unleashed Storage 24 upon the world. Personally, I was hoping to see a step up from the very decent F, or The Expelled.

What I will tell you straight away is that Storage 24 does not stray very far from F; a group of people trapped in an isolated location, that end up be hunted down. This time we get a group of adults who find themselves trapped in a storage facility, Storage 24 as it were, after a military plane crashes in central London, which in turn wreaks havoc with the computer systems. I know, it confused me too.

Thrown into this clusterfunk is something that is killing off folk, so we get a group of bickering adults trying to work as a team in order to stay alive. If I told you that Storage 24 was a mix of the aforementioned F and Alien, you’d probably get a very good idea of what to expect. Except that this is just not very exciting, or original.

Whilst the movie is very much a case of seen it before, it is actually a quite well made movie, one that works well with what I imagine is its limited budget. The main problem being is that there really isn’t anyone that you feel any attachment to; everyone is a pain in the ass and pretty much unlikeable. Hint, you need to have a survivor that folk want to survive in order to make an effective horror film, otherwise it’s just pointless.

So, on top of the horrible bunch of miscreants wandering around, Storage 24 is also not especially exciting. There is a lot of not a lot going on; we know there’s a beastie on the loose, so we get scenes of wandering/arguing and then the occasional kill scene. What does work in the movie’s favor though is that some of the kills are quite gruesome, and the monster, aside from looking a little Brundlefly, is actually fairly cool. Also, there did seem to be an emphasis on practical effects over computer generated images, and that always scores highly with me.

Credit must also be given to Magnet, who have released Storage 24 in the States, as they have given us a pretty decent release. The Blu-ray looks very nice, and there are a solid amount of special features included, such as deleted scenes, some behind the scenes featurettes, an audio commentary and video blogs. For this I would say that the disc is worth checking out.

The original screenplay idea for Storage 24 came from the lead actor, Noel Clarke, and I must say that it is not his best idea thus far. Clarke, who wrote the excellent kidulthood and Adulthood among others, seemed to have the genesis of a good idea which was then transformed into an average film by the actual screenwriters. What frustrated me most was that the opening few minutes and closing scene actually set this up for a much bigger picture. Who knows, maybe with a bigger budget, and a few more ideas, we might see these ideas developed on, although I am not holding my breath.

It’s a real shame as this had been a movie I was looking forward to, especially considering the talent attached, but at the end of the day it just wasn’t very inspiring. It certainly wasn’t terrible, it’s just not a film that will linger in the mind for too long. Instead, it’ll probably just make you want to watch Alien.

Storage 24 was released by Magnet Releasing on March 12th and is available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital.