First Trailer for Sci-Fi Thriller Cold Storage has Fungus, Goop and Brains Galore

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The first trailer for Cold Storage presents a new twist on the familiar category of the terrifying parasitic infection movie: the exploding brain. The infected individuals in the trailer do not appear to be quite like the fear-inducing zombies of something like The Last of Us or The Walking Dead, rather, their main threat is posed by their suddenly exploding heads, which send green, sizzling, infectious goop all over the place.

Based on a novel of the same name by David Koepp—the screenwriter of Jurassic Park, and many other films—the trailer begins with a dry, dusty apocalyptic landscape and some long-dead corpses near a military storage facility. Two foolish security workers, played by Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell, poke around the facility only to discover signs of a parasitic fungus running rampant. There are lots of explosions, some of which involve grotesque bodily fluids. As the text cards in trailer aptly put it, “The end of the world is pretty sick.”

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Which isn’t to say that the trailer is devoid of humor. For some reason, there’s also a deer that languidly walks into an elevator in the storage facility, which Joe Keery’s character remarks on in classic deadpan fashion. Why is there a deer in this military storage facility? Why is the deer taking the elevator while our hapless protagonists watch in confusion? Why has Liam Neeson been paired with these two? The deer almost raises more questions than the dangerous parasitic fungus that looks like it was intentionally hidden and covered up. Hopefully the deer, and Neeson, can avoid the gruesome, explosive fate that befalls so many of the infected humans that populate the depths of the facility.

Directed by Jonny Campbell with a screenplay by David Koepp, Cold Storage—which is shaping up to be a zany, over-the-top, and slightly comedic take on the viral infection thriller—will be released in 2026. Check out the first trailer below.