UNIT 234: The Lock Up (2024)

4 stars

Signature Entertainment. Digital Platforms. Out Now

The film opens with an operation. A donor organ is packed away. We then see a van rushing through traffic to Schuyler Self Storage. The driver unloads… but not as expected – it’s a body on a gurney which he locks into one of the units inside the building.

Laurie (Isabelle Fuhrman) is suffering from a quarter life crisis it seems (is that a thing now?). She is busy packing to catch a flight to go see her boyfriend Jordan. She lives in the house next to the self storage site. She inherited the business from her late parents and now runs the facility. Visiting the front office she learns that Marcie can’t work the weekend. So bang goes her trip – and she’s stuck there as she can’t find cover so late in the day.

On a building site the van we saw earlier pulls up. But the driver doesn’t have ‘the package’ with him as we have seen him stash it away earlier. This doesn’t please property developer Jules (Don Johnson) but after the van driver is shot dead he finds a card with the storage unit 234 on it.

Jules and his two cronies arrive to try and get into 234 but none of the keys they have work. He goes to speak Laurie at the office to try and persuade her that the unit is his (despite what the computer shows). Laurie understandably demands he leave. Of course later they come back… just what (or indeed who) is in the unit they desperately want to get into? Thus begins a night of terror, as a storm rages outside.

A storage facility makes for a good creepy location, with all its numerous corridors and corners to hide in. Fuhrman, best known among genre fans for her role in 2009’s ORPHAN and its 2022 sequel, is excellent as the resourceful owner, whilst Johnson is clearly relishing his role as the baddie of the piece.

Director Andy Tennant has produced a good solid thriller with horror overtones in its latter scenes and with some good, unexpected plot twists in the script by Derek Steiner. Tennant is an experienced helmer with such films as FOOL’S GOLD (2008) and HITCH (2005) under his belt.

Steve Kirkham