Writers: Noel Clarke (original idea and screenplay), Johannes Roberts (screenplay), Davie Fairbanks (screenplay), Marc Small (screenplay)
I really like it when a movie lives up to its title. This one promises us Storage 24 and boy do we get it! A whole truckload of Storage 24! In fact, the entire movie takes place... in STORAGE 24!.
Fortunately, there's a hideous alien monster that kills people in there, because, you see, a storage (24 or otherwise) in itself isn't a particularly interesting setting. Imagine this being a drama, where people just go around and talk and yell at each other and we have to wait all the way to the very end of the movie for someone to day of cancer... in a storage. I imagine that would really suck, even if the storage in question had been the infamous... Storage 24!
Apart from being faithful to its title and set in the Storage 24 (I would've felt really cheated if it had been Storage 23 or something), this was also a surprisingly cool movie. Generally, a low budget and a claustrophobic setting are a recipe for disaster, but Johannes Roberts turned out to be a pretty skilful director who managed to make it all work.
First of all, there are no crappy introductions - right at the beginning, the people in Storage 24 are startled by a loud noise, which upon further investigation turns out to be caused by a plane crash. One of the guys finds his car crashed by a plane engine and I thought at that moment that it would be really cool if he yelled something like "Donnie Darko, you son of a bitch!". Johannes Roberts obviously had different opinion, so he avoided this cheesy and nonsensical Donnie Darko reference.
The important thing about the crash (even more important than a squished car) is that it was a military plane that was carrying something really nasty. Our heroes soon find themselves locked in the Storage 24 (I don't really remember how that happened, I have this nasty habit of missing out on important details in movies) along with the mysterious content of the crashed plane. It's not a real surprise that said content is extremely hungry... and not a vegetarian.
The thing about that thing is that it's a very good looking thing. Don't get me wrong, it's not Cindy Crawford (hell, it's not even Keira Knightley!), in fact it's even uglier than most male members of the human population, but the design is great and worthy of a film with a much larger budget. Its mouth look slightly like Predator's and the body somewhat resembles a giant insect even though it walks on two feet and it likes eating people's faces with that hideous mouth of his.
So, anyway, it looks great, and there are plenty of scenes where you can see it in full glory. Low budget movies usually use that irritating monster POV during most of the killings and only show it at the end, but here it isn't like that. I imagine this was a wise production decision - save money on location and use it to make a decent looking monster. And it provides some nice bloody killings - for example, it was great when some older guy came to face the monster and tried to confuse it with his trash talk and the monster got pissed off and instantly ripped off half of his face.
The movie also avoids some usual clichés in the character department. Not only the black guy doesn't die first, he becomes the leading hero (!). We don't see this very often (we did in Creature two years ago, but that's about that). Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that the actor who plays that lead role was also a producer and one of the writers, but be that as it may, he's a very likeable character.
There's also some drama between the characters, which thankfully never gets overdone. The black guy has this blonde ex girlfriend who left him for unknown reasons and only later he finds out that she's been screwing his best friend for quite some time. That "best friend" is some white guy who looks OK at the beginning, but shows his true colours when crap hits the fan and turns into a major asshole. Luckily, all of these people (including another blonde and some other guys) are normal grown ups, so we don't have to put up with another brunette-blonde-stoner-black guy-geek formula that usually comes up when a film deals with younger people (teenagers or students).
Basically, these are the two main ingredients that make this movie not suck - the characters that resemble real life people and a well made monster. There's also some well placed humour scattered around, for example when the ugly Predator-like monster gets distracted by a toy puppy. Of course, this is not Alien or Halloween and you won't feel that kind of tension, but you will (probably) be entertained.
I also have to mention the ending, without spoiling it, of course. It's that usual twist ending that's certainly been seen before, but the way they did it here was quite... interesting. I certainly don't mind that kind of stuff, I immensely enjoyed the robot at the end of Feast 3, but some people will probably find it a bit out of place.
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