Storage 24 - Blu-ray Review

'a MacGuffin needs to be found in order for our band of misfits to escape. What is said MacGuffin? It is literally called 'a device thing''

A supremely unfortunate alpha male finds himself trapped in a strange location with his recently ex-girlfriend and a selection of other idiots no-one cared enough about to properly characterise. Unfortunately, Drew Godard and Joss Whedon do not appear on the horizon to make the whole thing a clever comment on genre and voyeurism.

Instead, Storage 24 proceeds as expected, from the initial scene where it is pointed out that one character is a bit odd for continuing to use matches to light his cigarettes (MIGHT THIS BE IMPORTANT LATER?), to the point in the final third where a MacGuffin needs to be found in order for our band of misfits to escape. What is said MacGuffin? It is literally called 'a device thing'. If nothing else, Storage 24's script is remarkably honest about how its plot gets from point to point.

Along the way things fail to get particularly scary on even one or two occasions, although the make-up work, headed by Conal Palmer on a limited budget, is pleasantly gory. The whole thing may actually have been more successful played as a Slasher rather than Sci-Fi, although that genre does at least give director Johannes Roberts the chance to display his final shot, which is admittedly quite neat.

Roberts though, fails to give much attention to the story and characterisation and although Storage 24 moves along in a pleasantly zippy way, the things zipping past are any notion of empathy, sympathy or ability to like anyone on show. One character decides, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, that they are going to sacrifice themselves at the feet of the alien, a move which unsurprisingly ends badly. Everyone else plumbs various depths of unlikeability, Clarke himself the only person on display with both the characterisation and the acting chops to garner your support. Everyone else is just walking alien fodder.

Could have been claustrophobic and cloying, instead it's just another genre entry without much of a clue.

Storage 24 is out on UK Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 29th October 2012.