Storage 24

Storage 24 follows several disparate characters as they find themselves trapped in, of course, a storage facility, with their efforts to find an exit eventually becoming more and more frantic after a mysterious, bloodthirsty creature arrives on the scene. It’s a seemingly foolproof premise that’s employed to distinctly (and consistently) underwhelming effect by director Johannes Roberts, as the filmmaker, working from a screenplay cowritten with Noel Clarke, Dave Fairbanks, and Marc Small, offers up a narrative that’s been jam-packed with generic, hackneyed elements that slowly-but-surely drain one’s interest – with, for example, the movie’s absence of sympathetic characters growing more and more problematic as time progresses. (The by-the-numbers assortment of protagonists includes, among others, the arrogant jerk, the reluctant hero, and the love interest.) It’s clear, too, that the movie’s few positive attributes are rendered moot by the pervasively stale atmosphere, with, especially, the sprinkling of appreciatively gruesome kill sequences hardly boasting the visceral impact one might’ve anticipated. (This is to say nothing of the film’s total lack of tension.) The persistently average atmosphere ensures that Storage 24 is, at the very least, watchable from start to finish, and yet, given the strength of the setup, it’s impossible not to wish the filmmakers had aspired to something more than mediocrity.

** out of ****