I was entertained. It's a good mix of horror and comedy. That's a difficult balance and they achieved it. I think a big part was that the main characters all acted intelligently in the situations. That let them continue the story and add humor without it being at their expense.
It starts with a part of Skylab being left in the Australian outback after it broke up. Turns out someone found it, put it in front of their store, and charged admission to look at it. Sounds about right. But then there's a phone call made to an army call center that there's a problem. That sets up the situation.
The army calls in specialists who take a look. Time and cleaning have scratched up the damaged tank enough to create microfissures. The tank contained something nasty they wanted to study in space and it brought it back. The stuff got through the microfissures, infected everyone in the town, and they all exploded as it tried to spread.
Everything goes to heck when some of the goo gets into the boot tread of the scientist who got a sample and then into her system. They're in the proper protective gear otherwise. She gets infected and does what she knows she needs to do, with a 9mm. They blow up the tank and get the heck out of there.
The sample is put into a government storage facility with all the necessary safeguards - underground, pressurized, temperature controlled, etc. and then forgotten. The facility is abandoned then sold to become a storage unit facility. Cut to present day.
I might get out of sequence here but it all works either way.
The manager is, of course, a jerk. He's into fencing stolen goods and being obnoxious to the employees. He tells the overnight guy coming on shift that there's some noise to look into and that there's a new girl starting and he's got her on walk and lock check duty. Of course he makes sexist remarks about her.
A customer comes in and heads to her storage unit. She's an old lady and once she's in her unit she pulls the door shut and gets out a gun. She's talking to a picture of what turns out to be her husband and it's their anniversary. She puts up the gun and then decides to take a nap before doing more. Remember her.
The guy hears the noise but doesn't pay much attention since it's an intermittent ping. She and he get to talking, they hear it, they locate it behind drywall, and decide to check it out. She's more eager for it than he is but he goes along with it.
The noise is an alert that there's a problem with one of the government storage units, of course the one with the ick. That alerts the army call center who then contacts the guy who found it the last time. He's retired now but has been keeping an eye on things and writing up reports and contingencies that no one bothers with. The girl who takes the call decides to help out more than the officer on duty wants to do (there's a beef between him and the guy who found the stuff) and reads his last report. She's willing to get him what he needs to fix it. All they talk about is item numbers on the list, not what they correspond to. Item Seven is noted a few times.
Back at the storage facility they break through the wall to find the control display and the alarm that's going off. It's in a sublevel they didn't know existed and the way there is down a two story ladder down a tunnel. After more coaxing they decide to head down. They find the unit without a problem, read the label with the army department acronym that they have no idea what it is, and go inside. There's ick growing on the walls and they find a bunch of rats in a pile infected with the ick. They intelligently get out and close the door again, taking note of the acronym.
Now for the not so smart secondary character. Her ex and the father of her daughter shows up and is sitting in his car, upset. The reason for his upset is in the trunk and he's waving a gun around. There's a thump from the trunk and we find it to be a dead cat. Except that it's not dead even with half its head gone (not a pretty thing if you like animals) and it runs up the building to impale itself on the top of a light post, and explode. It got the ick while the car was in the parking lot we find out later. He's infected as are some nearby deer.
The two of them go back upstairs and call the department. They get patched through to the same person who has been helping the original guy. Now it's all tied together. They know not to touch the stuff, like they needed to be told, and that someone would be coming out to deal with it. A nice change of pace from how these normally go.
The infected deer walks into the facility, wanders around, then explodes in the lobby. No one gets infected. The baby daddy is wandering around looking for the girl. The ick has gotten smarter about how to infect humans and he's trying direct contact. The two of them hide in a storage unit while he zombie walks around looking for them.
The official guy finds out he's the only one who's going to fix this and his partner gets him what he needs but doesn't go with. The army is sending him more as a placate thing than taking it seriously. But he gets what he asked for and is on the ground to help. A problem is that it spreads faster in water and a storm is approaching so now there's a time element. Not a bad thing.
Wow. I'm doing the whole screenplay here. I'll try to shorten things up.
The manager comes back with his friends to take a bunch of TVs out of a unit to fence. They get infected by baby daddy and the overnight guy is smart enough to slide the lock so they're trapped in the storage unit. The manager lets them out and now it's two of them and three infected. Well. And one who saw what was going on and wisely decided to bug out. The manager moves the infected ones out at gunpoint and the other uninfected one ends up slipping into the exploded deer.
The army guy is there now and getting the two of them to help him out. They get protective gear and they also get the job of planting the small nuclear weapon to deal with the problem. The reason for that is the guy got a back injury in the original situation and can't do it himself. He'll keep everyone inside while they do their thing and get out. He makes a very good point about the need to kill people in cold blood just on the suspicion that they might be infected. They choose to plant the bomb instead.
There's another time element in that the bomb has a timer, of course. And it's on the fritz so it isn't exact. But they have enough time to plant it and get out. At least that's what their led to believe. The army guy takes out the tires on all the vehicles in the parking lot except his own and waits to do the same with anyone but those two coming out of the facility.
One of the infected people breaks away and the old lady has come out of her storage unit after hearing noise. She wisely shoots the infected one when she sees the ick. Then she gets out of there, giving the gun to the guy. The manager and all the rest end up dead. The army guy hurt his back so he's on the ground. The two of them get the bomb placed and find out the army guy started the timer back when he gave it to them so now they're moving fast to get out.
The army guy's partner shows up and helps him into the vehicle just as the two of them run out of the storage facility. They don't get shot. The four of them drive off and drive just ahead of the nuclear explosion that's taking out the underground stuff. They're not too worried about using a nuke because it's deep enough underground that it will be mostly contained on the surface with the bad stuff being underground. Sure.
The army girl who's been helping shows up in the army guy's hospital room to introduce herself and they have a little chat about what happened and why she went against orders. The commanding officer who didn't take it seriously is on the news trying to explain why there was a nuclear explosion in the middle of nowhere and it wasn't going well. The guy and girl are sitting in the park playing with her daughter.
Everyone was smart and got their happy ending. Then they show some deer grazing and you remember that several deer were in the explosion radius but only one was in the facility. They went a little gratuitous by having the deer throw up at the camera but hey, they had to have their fun too. There could be a sequel if this does well enough. The only expensive talent is Liam Nielson so they could make it happen.
It was fun. Having everyone be smart was a refreshing change so that it made me more invested in seeing who got through to the end. The obnoxious manager was an obvious "not gonna make it" and it was more a matter of how and when, which is fine. Mixing up the ick with the comedy parts was well done and I actually liked all the characters, even the old lady you see so briefly.
I want to say this is a movie you can point to and show that just because it's a horror type movie it can be more than people getting infected and things blowing up. There can be tension, humor, and strong characters. A pleasant surprise indeed.
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