Currently Playing On Demand
Director: Johannes Roberts
Film Pulse Score: 2/10
Storage 24 is the latest alien-based horror comedy from director Johannes Roberts. This UK film takes everything we think of when it comes to these kinds movies and makes it the most bland and predictable it can. It’s a nothing of a film and this review will probably take more effort to produce than the film itself.
The plot is as generic as it can be without just showing a blank screen for an hour an a half. A bunch of twenty-somethings get stuck in a storage facility after a plane crash knocks out the city’s power. As it would happen, there’s an alien on the loose in the facility as well, and the group must work together in order to slowly be picked off one by one.
The worst part of this film is the fact that Noel Clarke is involved. Clarke stars in the film, and also wrote and produced. This is a real shame, as he is a genuinely talented actor, writer, and director. Kidulthood and its sequel Adulthood were great films showing the plight of the modern disaffected youth in London. This is nowhere even close to the quality of those films, and regardless if you’re a fan of Noel Clarke, this should be avoided.
One could think of Storage 24 as an Attack the Block rip-off, however even mentioning the two in the same breath does Attack the Block a disservice. Where that film had a specific sense of style and happened to be very funny, this fails on all levels.
The comedy isn’t funny at all. The douchy best friend isn’t funny, the snarky protagonist isn’t funny, the weird homeless man isn’t funny. All the characters feel like throwaways from every typical horror movie you can think of. None of them had any real personality, so if the alien offed one of them, it didn’t matter. In fact, I found myself relieved when someone would get killed because I knew that would be one corpse closer to the end of the film.
The storage facility happens to also compliment the film’s blandness and unoriginality. Endless lockers, hallways, and ducts that all look the same make this an absolute bore to look at. The filmmakers seem to try to make up for it by introducing a lot of close ups and tight shots to convey the claustrophobic area the characters are in, but the film doesn’t benefit from it. Adding flair to a movie like this is almost an insult.
The only thing done right on a technical level was the alien itself. While it reminded me of the aliens in The Watch, it was at least creepy and gross looking. That’s not to say I enjoyed the alien, I just didn’t despise it.
Storage 24 contains all the fun of hanging out in a storage locker, without having to deal with the roaches and mice, or the guys cooking meth in the locker beside you. After watching this, I actually looked it up to see if this was a SyFy original film, but alas, this is a real movie. If you’re considering giving this one a watch, just pop on a Storage Wars marathon instead, it will be more intellectually stimulating.
