Storage

Anchor Bay Entertainment (2009)

R4 DVD

This great film doesn’t seem to have made the impact that it should have. Possibly it’s a bit too close to the events in a rural town in South Australia that inspired it. The film has a number of twists as the plot explores the possibilities as well as some seriously horrible and gory scenes.

Teenager Jimmy (Matt Scully) goes to live with his uncle, Leonard (Damien Garvey) following the death of his father. Leonard runs an underground storage facility where each customer is rented a lockup shed and given the only key to the lock. They are free to come and go as they wish, but the whole area is monitored by CCTV for security. Although Leonard stresses that the privacy of their customers is critical he has an idea what some of them are doing in their storage – there is the drug maker who stores his chemicals and equipment in his lockup, and the lady whose deceased husband’s effects are in storage. She sometimes comes in and browses through them.

Jimmy notices one customer, Francis, who seems to be hiding evidence of a crime in his lockup – women’s clothing and a gun. He replays the CCTV footage and sees a human hand in the boot of the man’s car. He wants to get into the lockup and check but Francis has the only key – or does he? Zia, the secretary, reveals that Leonard has a set of lockpicks in his desk. They pick the lock and confirm what Jimmy saw but Leonard is not impressed. He points out that he could be shut down for such a breach, but he is also worried that he could be hiding the evidence of a murder. He decides he and Jimmy will pay Francis a visit at his home and “throw a bit of a scare into him”. Some things are just too dodgy for Leonard to tolerate.

The sinister side of Uncle Leonard is now revealed. His “throwing a scare” consists of torturing Francis until he admits to killing his wife, then smashing his head in with a hammer. The body goes back to the storage facility where another more horrible secret is revealed. Jimmy must now decide whose side he is on.

Matt Scully plays the confused, naïve teenager well but the film belongs to Damien Garvey as Leonard. He could be everyone’s favourite uncle – there to help, tough enough to make that help count, solid and dependable. Even when he is bashing Francis’ head in he makes it all sound so reasonable, so necessary.

Storage is a real gem of a film. Give it a try.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 4 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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