Exclusive interview: Jonny Campbell on ‘Cold Storage’

With Cold Storage now available to buy or rent digitally and arriving on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD today, director Jonny Campbell is enjoying the reaction to a film that proudly embraces creature-feature chaos, B-movie energy, and old-school sci-fi horror thrills. Adapted from David Koepp’s 2019 novel, the film stars Liam Neeson, Joe Keery, and Georgina Campbell in a story about a parasitic fungus threatening to break free from an underground military storage facility.

For Campbell, the appeal of the project was immediate. “It’s not hard to sell the concept when it’s written by David Koepp,” he says. “He wrote a terrific novel, and he wrote his own screenplay.” From the beginning, Campbell understood exactly what kind of film Cold Storage wanted to be. “We set out to make a popcorn movie, an entertaining movie,” he explains. “In some ways, it’s got quite a nostalgic vibe to it.”

That nostalgia runs deep through the film’s DNA, evoking the anarchic spirit of creature features and sci-fi horror from decades past. Campbell embraces comparisons to B-movies, though he is keen to redefine what that label means. “I don’t think you set out to make a B-movie,” he says. “B-movies get a bit of a bad name for being, in some way, inferior to other movies.” Instead, he points to the freedom and audacity often associated with the genre. “It has a sort of slightly anarchic… but also audacious sort of tone to it.”

What matters most, he says, is the film’s willingness to entertain unapologetically. “There’s an intention to entertain and to do what it wants, and not to be shy of doing that.” Campbell believes Cold Storage taps into what audiences genuinely love about cult cinema. “There’s a strain in the DNA of it which taps into what people like about B-movies,” he says, while also stressing the intelligence underpinning the chaos. “There’s truth buried underneath it.”

That balance between absurdity and credibility became one of the film’s biggest creative challenges. “When you’re trying to balance the horror, and the humour, and the science fiction, and the science fact actually, it is a bit of a tightrope sometimes,” Campbell explains. The scientific grounding was especially important to both Campbell and Koepp, who wanted the outlandish premise to feel rooted in something believable. “Through fantasy and storytelling, [the film can] make us think about our own worlds in a different way,” he says.

Campbell admits his own instincts naturally lean toward comedy. “I personally lean more towards the comedy,” he says. “I just like laughing, and I like acknowledging the absurdity of certain situations.” But maintaining the balance was crucial. “If you go too far towards the humour, does it undercut the horror? That was a constant balancing act.”

To make the later comedy work, the opening of the film had to play things straight. “The prologue, by its very nature, had to be a bit serious,” he explains. “You needed the danger to feel real and visceral and proper in order for the humour to work later.” That tonal shift, moving from grounded tension into increasingly outrageous territory, became part of the film’s identity.

The cast proved vital in pulling off that balancing act. Campbell speaks warmly about the chemistry between his leads, particularly the dynamic between Neeson, Keery, and Campbell. “One of the most memorable things about it was seeing how joyful that relationship was,” he says. “Liam… seeing the younger talent coming through and really acknowledging it and applauding it, it was great to see.”

Although Neeson is often associated with intense dramatic roles and action thrillers, Campbell says the actor fully embraced the film’s more playful side. “As Liam said a few times, it’s important to have a giggle,” he recalls. That sense of fun extended across the production, with the cast clearly relishing the opportunity to lean into the film’s stranger moments.

Visually, Cold Storage presented its own unique set of challenges. Much of the film unfolds within the confines of the storage facility itself, requiring Campbell to continually reinvent the environment. “Each new layer needs to offer more interesting visuals and up the stakes,” he says. “It’s about combining multiple locations to feel like it’s this pressure cooker.”

Looking back across a career that has included work on shows such as Westworld, Doctor Who, and Dracula, Campbell sees Cold Storage as part of an ongoing creative evolution rather than a dramatic departure. “You have to do material that really speaks to you,” he says. “It’s not a means to an end.”

At a time when mid-budget genre filmmaking feels increasingly rare, Campbell remains optimistic about the appetite for ambitious, entertaining horror. “People still like having a laugh and watching horror comedies,” he says. “Finding your voice… and just going for it, really.”

Watch the full interview here:

Jonny Campbell on ‘Cold Storage’

Cold Storage is available now to buy or rent digitally and is released today on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD.

Cold Storage trailer