During his career, Jonny Campbell has jumped across many genres, covering things like zombies, Dr. Who, and even Dracula. This experience made him a great choice to take on a horror-comedy like Cold Storage.
Based on the script and story by David Koepp (screenplay writer for Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park), Cold Storage stars Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Taken) as agent Robert Quinn, Joe Keery (Stranger Things) as Travis “Teacake” Meacham, and a guest appearance from the legendary Vanessa Redgrave as Ma Rooney.
We spoke with Jonny Campbell about the challenges of a horror-comedy and what this interesting cast brought to this film.
Horror Geek Life: What made you want to direct a horror-comedy like Cold Storage?
Jonny Campbell: I have always been drawn to things with humor in them; I always have been. I did Dr. Who, which covered science fiction, but has always had humor in it, then I did In The Flesh, which was a zombie story, very dark, graveyard humor. Most recently, before I had the script sent to me for Cold Storage, I directed the first part of the Dracula adaptation that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss wrote, and David and Gavin, the producers of Cold Storage, had seen it and thought it captured the right tone they were after for their film.
HGL: It can be a fine line, blending horror and comedy. How did you maintain that balancing act for Cold Storage?
Jonny Campbell: It is a bit of a tightrope you have to walk to get that tone. I hope we only wobbled a few times while walking the tightrope, because that’s part of the fun. Different audiences react in different ways, so you try and have that line without homogenizing it too much. It has to have peaks and troughs; it has to have unpredictable moments, some big and some subtle moments, just to keep some variety.
I mean, you can only do it to your own taste, then you get into the edit, and there’s a lot of other voices that remind you about things, and that’s really where it gets interesting in a way because it gets formed at that point. I always talked about the comedy, and being honest about it because having comedy in something is the hardest thing to do. You can implore all kinds of things to scare people, but the tone of this was the protagonists getting to know each other.
It was written with a very dry wit by David Koepp, and in order to preserve that, I really wanted to lean into the ridiculousness of the things that were happening and the absurdity of it; that’s what draws me in. I think it was grounded through the performances. Ultimately, I think they were never self-aware that things were funny; they were just reacting in a way those people would react in those situations. Liam was probably a bit more knowing because that was part of the juxtaposition between his character and Teacake and Naomi, but I think Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell, they were literally quite gleefully going on this adventure only to realize, “Oh, do you want to open it now?”
It was very honest, and I think there is a total synergy with the audience for those characters; they are us in those situations. It doesn’t take too long within the story to set them up; it’s very economical, but it also gives time to establish them as characters you care about, and I think that’s quite rare in those situations.
HGL: The film has quite an interesting mix of young and veteran actors. What was it like working with the cast, especially Vanessa Redgrave and Lesley Manville?
Jonny Campbell: Well, you make it sound like we had to twist their arm (laughs). You know, I think serious actors, Lesley is on Broadway at the moment; she’s a really serious actress, but she hasn’t done things where, she’s had to fire a gun, do crazy things, and she’s got a sense of humor, she’s allowed to do something for a giggle as well.
Same with Liam; he played Oscar Schindler, and he played Frank Drebin Jr., and why can’t they? They enjoy becoming these characters and having a laugh, too. I think that’s what was good about that dynamic: you have the double acts. One an older couple, and one a younger couple. Leslie and Liam have worked together before, so there was already a really good rapport there, but the last movie they did together was a really serious and moving story about someone with cancer, so this is kind of a nice counterfoil to that, this aging team trying to save the world.
As for Vanessa Redgrave, she’s terrific in this; she’s actually Liam’s mother-in-law and good friends with our costume designer Nicoletta. When we were talking about who could play this, it’s an interesting part that needed gravitas; it has a serious beat in the movie, and her name came up, and we wondered if she would do it.
She lives in Italy, speaks Italian, we were shooting in Rome, and she’d never be in the same movie as Liam, so I think there was an attraction to that. Also, she got the script, came to the screening the other night and loved it, and she was really a scene stealer. She came in with only a couple of lines and blew everyone away, so I loved working with them.
Related: ‘Cold Storage’ Review: A Sci-Fi Horror Comedy That Hits the Sweet Spot
HGL: What was the most difficult scene to film, and conversely, what surprised you the most making this film?
Jonny Campbell: I think the most difficult thing was combining the interior scenes. We had a studio build of the outside of the facility, and we also shot a duplicate on location, so marrying those two things together, we couldn’t be beholden to the elements, shooting it all on location. We had to shoot the scenes essentially twice and brand them together, so technically that was quite tricky. Also, just the progress of the areas of the facility where the fungus had been spilled or blown up, plotting the pathways of the characters through this labyrinth, that it was going to work logistically.
The most joyful part for me, it wasn’t surprising, was just how electrifying I found Joe and Georgina together. They were so game for everything that they needed to do. One of the tricky things was that we filmed in a bunker, which was actually a former bunker built by Mussolini near Naples, and there were sequences in those huge tunnels where they open the rusty door into the lab.
Once they were filming there with hazmat suits on, which was very uncomfortable, that was quite tricky, with communication being difficult, time being tight, and lighting being a big task. As a director, unless you are Steven Spielberg, you are always up against the clock and so you have to be creative within boundaries.
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HGL: What projects do you have coming up next?
Jonny Campbell: I just bought the rights to a particular book I’m working on at the moment. It’s based on a true story, but has a comedic line through it, about these romance writers who were able to save these various Jewish people during the 1930s, through very unusual means in helping them escape. I’m intrigued with that because it’s just another example of what went on back then, how important that is, and the miracle of human decency.
I’m also attached to an interesting project; can’t say too much about it, but it’s like a steampunk Victorian kind of version of Ghostbusters. That’s a really fun script, and we’re just starting to cast that at the moment.
Horror Geek Life thanks Jonny Campbell for taking the time to meet with us and the fantastic interview. His newest film, Cold Storage is now available in theaters.
