When a highly contagious fungus escapes a sealed facility, two young employees and a grizzled bioterror operative must survive the wildest night shift ever to save humanity from extinction. A film by Jonny Campbell, starring Georgina Campbell, Joe Keery, Sosie Bacon, Vanessa Redgrave, Lesley Manville, Rob Collins, Gavin Spokes, Clare Holman, Ellora Torchia, Aaron Heffernan, Richard Brake, Andrew Brooke, Justin Salinger, Darrell D’Silva, Lujza Richter, Nahel Tzegai, Daniel Rigby, Vanessa Popkova, and Liam Neeson.

The Skylab space station fell out of orbit in 1979. During its mission, it had been home to hundreds of scientific experiments. Most of the debris burned up on re-entry, but some of it crashed to earth. NASA thought it had recovered every piece. They were wrong.

In Rome, research microbiologist Dr. Hero Martins (Sosie Bacon) receives a call from NASA Space Biosciences patching her through to Enos Minjarra (Rob Collins), a man in the remote community of Kiwirrkurra, Western Australia.

Enos pleads with her for help, telling her his people are dying after something came out of a NASA tank his uncle found near the Tanami Basin in the 1970s. Before she can get any more out of him, a sandstorm cuts the line dead.

Thirty-six hours later, Dr. Martins arrives at Kiwirrkurra, where she is joined by Major Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson) and his partner Lieutenant Colonel Trini Romano (Lesley Manville). Dr. Martins is surprised that DTRA only sent two people.

DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) is a U.S. Department of Defense agency that works to reduce and counter threats from weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons, as well as high-yield explosives. It supports both strategic efforts like deterrence, arms control, and nonproliferation, and operational efforts by helping U.S. forces plan for and respond to dangerous threat environments. The agency is part of the Department of Defense and is headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

She explains that although most of Skylab fell into the Indian Ocean in 1979, one of its O2 tanks was recovered near here. A local man found it and put it outside his house, thinking people might pay to come see it. But this particular tank wasn’t empty. It had been sent up with a microbial organism, a parasitic fungus capable of adapting from one species to another. Whatever went up in that tank, Dr. Martins believes, isn’t what came back out. And now, everyone in Kiwirrkurra appears to be either dying or dead. Enos is missing, and no one has been in or out of the community since his call.

Dr. Martins spots the NASA O2 tank and begins her inspection. It looks like someone had been trying to clean it. She suspects that polysaccharides from potato and sodium palmitate from soap seeped into the tank through microfissures. Feeding on the nutrients and a little water, the fungus was able to multiply and escape. As she leans in to investigate one of the fissures, a mass of green fungus suddenly lunges at her. She jumps back, avoiding contact with her hazmat suit. But what she doesn’t notice is that she has just stepped on a tiny patch of it.

Trini discovers a corpse on the roof, prompting Dr. Martins and Robert to climb up and investigate. Examining the body, Dr. Martins notes pockmarked skin and ruptured flesh. It looks as though the victim burst from the inside. She points out that the skull has split completely open along all eight of its suture lines.

Scanning their surroundings, Robert is horrified when he spots the missing residents scattered across the neighboring roofs, lying dead in the same condition. Dr. Martins says the fungus drove the victims to climb, explaining that this is how an insect-pathogenic fungus reproduces.

It hijacks the host’s nervous system, controlling brain function, movement, reflexes, and impulses. Driven only by the need to infect others, it forces the host to seek high ground and wait until the fungus overfills its body cavity. Eventually, it bursts and scatters its spores into the wind.

Sickened, Robert urges Dr. Martins to collect her sample so they can evacuate immediately. As she works, she theorizes that perhaps the NASA tank picked up a hitchhiker in space, or an extraterrestrial spore penetrated its shell upon reentry, mutating into an entirely new species.

Unbeknownst to anyone, the deadly fungus seeps through the sole of Dr. Martins’s boot, piercing the skin of her foot and entering her bloodstream. Within minutes, the organism gains control of her brain and motor functions, compelling her to sprint toward their vehicle to escape.

Trini realizes Dr. Martins is infected and tries to stop her, but she cannot get a clear shot before the doctor throws the car into reverse. As Dr. Martins accelerates to run Trini over, Robert leaps forward to push Trini out of the way. The car slams into him instead, an impact that leaves him temporarily paralyzed from the waist down.

Dr. Martins steps out of the vehicle and reaches for a gun. Trini tackles her, and the two struggle fiercely for the weapon. Helpless on the ground, Robert watches in horror as Dr. Martins gains the upper hand and points the barrel directly at Trini. However, just before the fungus completely consumes her mind, Dr. Martins gathers her last ounce of willpower, turns the weapon around, and shoots herself in the chest. She dies instantly.

Moments later, a military unit arrives to secure the extraterrestrial sample and transport it to a classified underground cold storage vault within the Atchison mines in Texas. High above, an aircraft streaks across the sky and releases a payload of white phosphorus bombs. The ensuing inferno completely obliterates the Kiwirrkurra community, incinerating everything in its path, including the deadly fungus.

Years pass, and the government eventually decommissions the facility. They move everything out except the subterranean vault, which is sealed. The property is then sold to a commercial self-storage company.

Eighteen years later, a night security guard named Travis (Joe Keery) begins hearing a faint, persistent beeping. Unable to locate the source of the alarm, he starts to suspect that he might be hallucinating. His frustration mounts as the noise continues. So he asks the newly hired guard, Naomi (Georgina Campbell), if she notices anything unusual.

At first, she claims to hear nothing. However, when another sharp beep echoes through the corridor and they both catch it, Naomi becomes convinced that the sound is coming from inside the gypsum drywall.

Meanwhile, Major Robert Quinn is awakened in the middle of the night at his North Carolina home by a call from a DTRA officer (Ellora Torchia). She notifies him of a temperature breach alert triggered at 3:14 p.m. Central Standard Time from a decommissioned facility in the Atchison mines.

Robert is upset that he is only being notified now, hours after the initial event. The officer admits it took time to figure out the proper chain of command. Wasting no time, Robert states he can be at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in 90 minutes. He orders her to have a plane ready and a car waiting for him when he lands in Kansas.

The officer asks Robert to confirm if this situation officially qualifies as a Heightened Threat. Robert bluntly replies that it qualified as an Exceptional Threat the moment the alarm tripped at 3:14 p.m. When the officer hesitates, explaining she cannot fulfill his requests without multiple authorizations, Robert warns her that this fungus is intensely adaptable and will mutate and spread in unpredictable ways. Leaving no room for debate, he instructs her to get Gordon Gray to clear her and make everything happen.

🅟

@pradt

COLD STORAGE 🦠
Their shift has hit the fan.
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A film by Jonny Campbell, starring Georgina Campbell, Joe Keery, Sosie Bacon, Vanessa Redgrave, Lesley Manville, Rob Collins, Gavin Spokes, Clare Holman, Ellora Torchia, Aaron Heffernan, Richard Brake, Andrew Brooke, Justin Salinger, Darrell D'Silva, Lujza Richter, Nahel Tzegai, Daniel Rigby, Vanessa Popkova, and Liam Neeson.

Directed by British filmmaker Jonny Campbell from a screenplay by David Koepp, COLD STORAGE is a sci-fi dark comedy horror following two night guards and a retired DTRA operative as they attempt to contain an extraterrestrial fungus that has escaped a decommissioned military facility. The story is based on Koepp’s 2019 novel.

COLD STORAGE was theatrically released in Mexico and Brazil on 29 January 2026, and in the United States on 13 February.