“If more attention were given to character development, “Storage 24” could have been a genre classic, instead of a mildly interesting diversion.”

Horror is a house with many doors, all opening onto the stuff of nightmares.  Whatever your interest, be it torture porn, poltergeists, vampires, zombies, and just about everything in-between, you’ll find a place just for you.  In this house, there’s also a room for what I like to call survival horror, a sub-genre that deals with a group of individuals trapped by a being–be it human or otherwise–which they have to overcome if they are to escape with their lives.

“Escape” can be relative, though.  For instance, I would consider John Boorman’s “Deliverance” a prime example of survival horror, despite the fact that it takes place on a river because the individuals that are being hunted do not know their way around, which in a very real sense restricts their movement.

Besides “Deliverance,” a classic of this sub-genre is Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (which straddles science fiction as well).

Though for my money, quite possibly the best example is found in John Carpenter’s remake of “The Thing” (which, like Scott’s film has elements of sci-fi, though the direction–as well as innovative special effects–are so strong that you could replace the antagonist with just about any monster you chose, and it would still work.

“Storage 24” as an example of survival horror that is in some ways similar to Carpenter’s film, in that there’s an alien that plagues a group of people, who in this case are trapped in a storage facility in central London.

Unfortunately, that’s where the similarities end because “Storage 24” isn’t in the same league as “The Thing,” or even “Without Warning,” for that matter, though it’s not due to the film makers not trying.

The special effects in “Storage 24” are, for the most part, delightfully practical, as is the alien itself.

It might have been cheaper to have done the film as if it were a video game, and director Johannes Roberts deserves credit for going the practical route.  While the effects work is commendable, the more basic character development is missing.

The characters themselves aren’t bad, just underdeveloped, which means that you don’t care what happens to them.

And while I have never been in a storage warehouse anywhere, never mind London, but why would there be metal tubes connecting individual units? It doesn’t make any sense, and seems to have been inserted just to enable the characters to move from storage space to storage space.

I don’t mind writing to move the story, but when it’s obvious that that’s exactly what it is, it takes me out of the story.

“Storage 24” is worth catching, if only because the alien design seems entirely practical and doesn’t try to mimic what has come before.  Other than that, there’s not a lot to recommend.