THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.
by Jarrod Jones. As anyone who’s spent time at a flea market or comic convention will tell you, collectors are zealous, dealers are cruel, and old stuff smells weird. Austin-based filmmaker Ray Spivey takes an even more sardonic view of this dust-besotted subculture in his new horror movie Storage Locker — to the extent that one might get the impression he keeps a low opinion of collectors in general, considering what some of the characters get up to in this.
Storage Locker isn’t about collectors so much as it’s about the pursuit of collecting; how one hoards trinkets, books, or baubles can become addictive, like most indulgent things in life are. Spivey’s ideas about addiction are lean, but it’s enough to hang a movie on — enough that, for a while at least, the travails of Packer Stanley (Avery Mayo) don’t grate the nerves too much.
That’s handy because Packer, Storage Locker’s voracious comic book aficionado, kicks things off with a series of choices so idiotic in his pursuit of collecting that it feels like Spivey wants us to hate him. For instance, Packer is so committed to owning his favorite superhero’s (rare, costly) debut issue that he’s willing to meet strangers in the middle of the night for a chance to buy it. Not surprisingly, Packer gets robbed. That’s the dog-eat-dog speculative market for you.
This opening sequence establishes two things. One, Packer isn’t very bright. The second we discover moments later: Packer has been putting his comic collection before everything else in life, including his long-suffering fiancee, Jenni (Hannah Hufford). Packer and Jenni were planning their wedding — and a Hawaiian honeymoon! — before Packer’s selfishness rendered him broke. “Collector’s hazard,” he shrugs.
I think we’re supposed to find this aspect of Packer’s personality endearing as well as alarming. Spivey tosses in a line about how Packer’s favorite hero, “The Spyder,” got him through his mother’s death and his father’s anger, but don’t buy the sob story; once Packer makes his big score — Storage Locker’s equivalent to Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy #15 — any emotional attachment to his childhood hero won’t stop him from flipping that comic for profit. Seconds after he evokes the image of his “father’s fists” to his best buddy Chas (David Trevino), he blurts out how much this high-grade comic, if he should ever get it, will “go for.”
So what about the eponymous storage locker? We come to that early on, in one of a few clean ways Spivey’s sordid narrative clicks together: Packer is forced to rent one for his comics after Jenni tosses him out. Fine. Here’s where things get screwy: he falls ass-backward into the lives of wealthy heiresses Diana and Apollonia Leto (Meredyth Fowler and Bobbie Grace) because they happen to own the storage facility. As for Packer’s locker (it’s more of a unit, but whatever), it smells funny and a punky little witch-kid is lurking around, giving the manager, Digger (Skeeta Jenkins), no end of aggravation.
The Leto sisters also happen to loom large in the local collector’s market, and because Storage Locker is better at being goofy than scary — there’s some Kevin Smith in its DNA, most of it coming from Mallrats — Packer quickly finds at least two superficial reasons to hang out with them. And while he doesn’t quite settle things with Jenni, who is frustratingly absent for a good chunk of the movie, Packer lands between Diana’s bedsheets anyway. In fact, Diana likes him so much (at least I think she does; Fowler and Mayo’s chemistry is astonishingly bad) she buys Packer his beloved comic book. Elsewhere, a bitter crank (Mike Gassaway) hones his grudge against the Leto sisters. Further in the periphery, the little stinky kid slashes at things with — what else? — a box cutter.
So, yeah. There’s more to the Letos than meets the eye. Apollonia is an aspiring witch, and Diana’s cold demeanor belies shady business dealings. They have Digger conduct after-hours activities at their storage facility (Jenkins, by the way, is the best part of the movie), which involve clouded plastic cages filled with people. Why are they there? I’m pretty sure it’s connected to the death of the sisters’ tycoon father (Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Allen Danziger, whose brief presence is considered a selling point), though I promise you the almost two hours Storage Locker takes to get it all sorted won’t be worth enduring its clumsy splatter effects and half-baked melodrama. Plus, it also requires you to spend most of the time with Packer.
Movies with unlikable protagonists, particularly those of the horror persuasion, tend to lead us down a series of events culminating with a karmic tipping of the scales. (For the sake of spoilers, I’ll spare you the frustrating, shallow ending to Spivey’s movie.) Storage Locker has an especially awful lead, but he’s more poorly written than hatable. Mayo’s floppy Peter Parker hair and gee-whiz smile seems designed to obscure his character’s selfishness, but it’s like he’s being directed to act like a superhero alter ego — clumsy, genial, prone to disaster — rather than a secret asshole. There’s a contradiction to his character that might have been worth exploring. Storage Locker doesn’t seem interested, or even aware, that it exists.
So Packer is an unconvincingly rendered fuck-up in a horror movie. That’s not a crime. Plenty of those are running around, particularly in the VOD wasteland where Storage Locker will find a home later this month. What makes Spivey’s movie tougher to appreciate is how passively he contrives reasons for Packer to move from one scene to the next. Watching a low-rent horror/comedy that meanders its way to a rough ending is one thing. Watching one that is so profoundly bad at being scary that it fumbles being funny — or even having a point — is agony.
1 out of 10
Storage Locker hits VOD on August 22.
Written and directed by Ray Spivey.
Cinematography by Rob Moore and Anton Savenko.
Starring Mike Gassaway, Bobbie Grace, Meredyth Fowler, Avery Mayo, David Trevino, Hannah Hufford, Skeeta Jenkins, Jeannie Carter-Cruz, and Allen Danziger.
Produced by Brian Jammer and Ray Spivey.
Not rated. Contains a stabby kid and phony horror elements.
More DoomRocket Reviews:
Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing is a blissed-out superhero B-movie
Álex de la Iglesia’s Mutant Action is Troma with a budget — and a brain
Junk Head: Oddly relatable mutant-horror dystopia from Takahide Hori
