Sixth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series #1: Storage 24

And we're off!  Rather with a muffled moan, which is better than a whimper but not so good as a bang.  To start this year's October scary movie series, I began with Storage 24, a British import monster movie.  It was astoundingly mediocre and yet I persevered.

Set in London, Storage 24 takes place in a 24-hour storage facility (see what they did there?).  At some point there's a plane crash, a military cargo plane going down just around the corner from the storage place.  Vehicles are crushed by debris, the electronics start to go wonky and a dogwalker loses her dog to SOMETHING that appears to have escaped from a crushed cargo container.  That evening, due to the wonky electronics, several people get trapped inside the storage facility when the metal shutters won't retract.  The parties in question:  Charlie (whose girlfriend has recently dumped him), Mark (Charlie's buddy), Shelly (Charlie's ex), her friend Nicki, Nicki's douchey boyfriend Chris, the storage facility's clerk, the maintenance guy trying to fix the stuck shutters and a crazy guy living in the storage facility because he's hiding out from his wife.  Also stuck inside the storage facility is the SOMETHING that got out of the crashed plane.

There's really not much story here:  people stuck in a place with a monster; people trying to escape from the place with the monster; the monster picking them off one by one, especially when they get separated from the group.  It's also not that scary because the movie reveals the monster far too soon.  SPOILER: it looks like a cross between the Predator and the prawns from District 9.  I did get a little tense towards the beginning of the movie, when Nicki goes to the loo by herself and could hear something moving about in the bathroom just outside the stall door.  But after that, there was really no suspense, not many jump scares and really not that much gore.

One thing I found particularly annoying was the cinematography.  Almost the entire film was shot with very tight close-ups so that it was nearly impossible to see what was going on.  I understand that the point was to induce claustrophobia and make it seem like everything was from the point-of-view of the characters, but a little more judicious use of varied shots would have been nice.  One thing I did appreciate was that the character of Charlie was played by Noel Clarke, who also played Rose's boyfriend Mickey on fifteen episodes of Doctor Who, so that's fun.  Charlie is also the only character who experiences any growth through the course of the movie, going from whiny schlub to hero.  So that's fun too.