Storage 24 review by Jimmy B (mild spoilers)

Director: Johannes Roberts    Screenwriters: Noel Clarke, Marc Small and Davie Fairbanks
Cast: Noel Clarke, Colin O'Donoghue, Laura Haddock, Antonia Campbell-Hughes

Plot: Charlie has just been dumped by his girlfriend, Shelley. He and his best friend Mark drive to a storage unit to get Charlie's stuff back. There he sees his ex, her friends and a couple of workers who all become trapped when the titular warehouse goes into lockdown. Things go from uncomfortable to worse for Charlie when the cause of a crashed cargo plane in London, a really pissed off alien, is discovered to have taken up residence in storage 24.

Review: Just a warning to start, towards the end of this review I mention the end of the film but I don't go into detail and I think I have still stayed within the 'mild spoilers' territory. From the brain of Noel Clarke (Mickey from Eccelston/Tennant era Doctor Who) this British sci-fi horror film is a bit of an oddity. All the action takes place in the one place which gives it a nice claustrophobic feel but then it fails to do anything new with it. These are situations you have seen time and time again as the hapless leads are picked off one by one with only one or two bits of originality in the kill scenes.

My major problem, though, is the characters. Charlie as played by Clarke is a bit of a dick, something that doesn't really change throughout the film. He steps up to be the hero as you'd expect but Clarke's permanent scowl/pout is there for the duration of the running time. If you have seen his films Kidulthood and Adulthood, he pretty much plays the same character in those but here he's a bit wimpier. If you haven't seen those films, I recommend them a lot more than I do this. Storage 24 tries to add pathos but as you don't really care about the characters in the first place or the (frankly ridiculous) situation they find themselves in it is pretty redundant. Also the end of the film is very flat and low key when it really should have had more of a kick to it. Still, the creature itself is not too badly designed (it's mouth is pretty creepy) and some of the gore effects are quite brutal. So brutal in fact that the film was edited for UK audiences to obtain a 15 rating. For all the use that did at the box office, they should have released it as an 18 in the first place.

Conclusion: Dull nonsense filled with unlikeable characters and chained down by an anorexic plot. It has a couple of nice gory kills and an inventive use of a toy dog but it gives you nobody to root for. Not even the alien......

2/5