Storage 24 is a Monster from a Familiar Mother

Shrewd horror movies generate terror by crafting their endangered characters in three dimensions—but it helps if those characters, however well-developed, aren’t unctuous creeps one desperately wants to see perish. Storage 24 fails on that latter point, detailing with grating excess the anger and bitterness between recently broken-up Charlie (Noel Clarke) and Shelley (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), who—along with Charlie’s best friend, Mark (Colin O’Donoghue), and a few other acquaintances—find themselves in inhuman trouble when, while visiting a storage facility, a plane crashes, and its beastly cargo is set free. The ensuing chases through corridors and air vents blandly recall Alien while the insectoid fiend resembles the offspring of Jeff Goldblum’s the Fly and Pumpkinhead, except with significantly less personality. Along with sturdy CG effects, director Johannes Roberts’s ominous pans through his claustrophobic milieu give the proceedings a professional sheen. Yet the eventual appearance of creature fodder in the form of a crazy old coot who lives in the storage facility, as well as a sequel-promising closing note borrowed from innumerable predecessors, ultimately exposes Storage 24 as a monster from a familiar mother.