STORAGE 24 (2012) Dir: Johannes Roberts DVD REVIEW

Shawn Francis continues his reviews of upcoming genre releases stateside with this look at the 2012 Brit monster flick STORAGE 24 starring Noel Clarke and featuring a rather nasty creature. Please check out Shawn's words after the jump...

Written By Shawn Francis

A cargo plane crashes in London letting loose something inhuman. Cut to Noel Clarke, who you’ll remember as Mickey, boyfriend to Rose on Doctor Who, playing Charlie. Charlie comes off as a dick. He has a best friend named, Mark (Colin O’Donoghue), and he had a girlfriend named, Shelly (Antonia Campbell-Hughs). Charlie is on his way to a public storage facility called, Storage 24 (Open 24hrs a day), to clear his shit out.

Unfortunately, Shelly and her friends, Nikki (Laura Haddock) and Chris (James Thomas King) are also there doing the same thing. Helping Shelly get her shit away from Charlie’s. Lurking within the warehouse is the inhuman occupant of that plane crash; killing anyone it comes into contact with. The crash also fucked up the security system of the warehouse dropping down the gate and trapping everyone inside.

This is pretty much a basic stalk-and-kill scenario. The creature is not especially clever, being more akin to any basic, earthly predator that kills when the opportunity presents itself. Though, it’s never clear why it wants, or needs, to kill the humans. Is it for food? Because it’s scared? Is it a psychopath? Or is it carrying out some other “prime directive?” We never know, nor does the movie ever tell us. It just kills, and Charlie and his friends just need to get out of the warehouse.

I love monster movies and can tolerate a lot of “deficiencies” in movies surrounding the monster. The one main “deficiency” here are the characters. Forty-four minutes in and I wasn’t connecting to any of them, especially the “main guy,” Charlie. He’s unlikable, but, I’ll admit, gets less unlikable as the movie goes on, and becomes downright endearing once he learns how much of an incomprehensible dick his best friend, Mark, can be. With best friends like that, who needs enemies? The pacing and the soap opera vibe in those first forty-four also didn’t help.

I will say the creature effects and the gore are top notch. For the most part the creature is a man in a suit, with slight CGI augmentation, like the moving of the mandibles, and of the mouth behind those mandibles. The blinking of the insectile eyes appear to be CGI enhanced, too, but this is an excellent example of using CGI for small things that don’t pull you out of the “reality” of the situation. There’s a heart extraction done to an unfortunate victim, which appeared to be helped by computers as well, but executed in such a way that it didn’t appear “computer fake.”

Since I neglected to specify blu-ray when I was requesting a copy of this movie, this review will be covering the standard DVD. The anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer is excellent, and I had no problems with the audio. Extras on the standard DVD are exactly the same as the ones on the blu-ray, and are also the same as the ones that came out in the U.K, so no one is missing anything.

Noel Clarke and director, Johannes Roberts talk about the film on an audio commentary.

First up are four Behind The Scenes Featurettes—Creature Development (21:42), Costume Design (17:54), Sound Design6:02), The Storage Unit (7:44)—which you can either play as one or play separately. Most fascinating was the Creature Development. Noel Clarke wrote the screenplay and initially used Marvel’s Venom and Carnage villains to reference what he was looking for in the design.

You also get three Video Blogs—Noel Clarke (2:59), Laura Haddock (4:15), Antonia Campbell-Hughs (3:00)—of the actors and actresses talking generally about working on the movie. Day In The Life—Noel Clarke (4:41) and Colin O’Donoghue (3:00)—follows two of the actors on their routine for the day. Noel likes to work out before filming. Scene Commentaries chronicles Noel Clarke (1:07) discussing his scene where he first arrives at the storage facility, Antonia Campbell-Hughs (1:13) discussing her scene fleeing the creature, Colin O’Donoghue (2:23) discussing the air vent scene with Noel, and Geoff Bell (1:15) discussing his death scene in the basement. And finally a collection of six Deleted Scenes (7:32); most are existing scenes that have been trimmed down, here you can see them unedited, and two scenes have unfinished CG FX in them. One extended scene a bit more gorier. All of these features can be played individually or separately.

Finally you get a Photo Reel (6:57), which is a gallery of screen and behind-the-scenes shots. Teasers/Promos (10:32), a U.S. Theatrical Trailer (1:52) and trailers for other Magnolia movies like, Sushi Girl, The ABCs Of Death, John Dies At The End, The Sorcerer And The White Snake and a promo for AXS.TV.

Sometimes good creature FX can make a bad movie good. Case in point, The Relic (1997), here, unfortunately, I needed more in the way of plot and characters, which I just didn’t think were there.