May 15, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Andy Tennant
Culture Representation: Taking place in Jacksonville, Florida, the dramatic film “Unit 234” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latin people and Asian people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A young woman experiences terror at her family-owned storage unit company, which is invaded by men who want something in storage unit 234.
Culture Audience: “Unit 234” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and cheesy crime dramas.
“Unit 234” tries to look more interesting than it is with a plot twist near the end of this sloppily made mystery drama about criminals invading a storage space business. There are too many plot holes and too much cringeworthy acting for “Unit 234” to be entertaining. Overall, it’s a substandard film that might be enjoyable for people who don’t mind watching movies that are predictable and unimaginative.
Directed by Andy Tennant and written by Derek Steiner, “Unit 234” takes place in Jacksonville, Florida, where 24-year-old Laurie Schuyler (played by Isabelle Fuhrman) owns and operates Schuyler Self-Storage, a business that she inherited from her deceased parents, who died in a car accident three years ago. (“Unit 234” was actually filmed in the Cayman Islands.) Laurie had plans to spend the weekend of her 25th birthday with her boyfriend Jordan (played by Anirudh Pisharody), who moved to Nashville about a year ago. Jordan and Laurie have been having problems in their long-distance relationship because not only has Laurie been resisting Jordan’s pleas for her to move to Nashville, but she’s also been canceling trips to visit Jordan in Nashville.
Those travel plans are canceled again when an employee named Marcy (played by Jenna Z. Alvarez), who was scheduled to be on duty that weekend, cancels on short notice because Marcy found out that she got accepted into the University of North Carolina and has to visit the campus with her parents. Laurie finds herself the only person who can work that weekend at Schuyler Self-Storage, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On a rainy night, while she is working in the office by herself, the business gets invaded by five criminals, led by a man named Jules (played by Don Johnson), who want something that is in storage unit 234.
As already revealed in the “Unit 234” trailer, what’s in that storage unit is a man who says his name is Clayton (played by Jack Huston), whom Laurie discovers handcuffed to a hospital gurney when she opens the storage unit. Clayton doesn’t know what he’s doing in the storage unit, but he suspects he is the victim of a group of criminals that illegally harvests human organs. He shows a surgery scar on his abdomen to Laurie.
The first scene in “Unit 234” shows who put Clayton in the storage unit: a frantic-looking thug named Benjamin “Benny” Salgado (played by Rosemberg Salgado), who is later tracked down by Jules and his goons. Things do not end well for Benny. Jules finds the storage unit information in Benny’s wallet, so Jules and his hoodlums go to Schuyler Self-Storage on that fateful rainy night.
Jules (who coughs and wheezes constantly, for unexplained reasons) doesn’t have the key to the storage unit. When he introduces himself to Laurie, he pretends to be Benny and says that his wife has the key but is unreachable because she’s away on vacation. Jules asks Laurie to open the storage unit. He doesn’t know that Schuyler Self-Storage keeps digital photo records of customers who rent storage units. Laurie knows Jules is lying because when she looks up the customer information for Unit 234 on the office computer, she sees Benny’s photo.
Laurie asks Jules to show his photo ID, but he refuses and gets angry with her. Laurie is nervous and scared, but she firmly tells Jules to leave. He reluctantly leaves, but you know he will be back. Laurie is curious about what’s in Unit 234, so she opens the storage unit. And that’s when she discovers Clayton, who is unconscious. He regains consciousness but is dazed and confused about why he’s in the storage facility and how he got there.
Jules soon comes back with members of his gang: his driver Leon (played by James DuMont); a cold-blooded assassin named Doc (played by Christopher James Baker); and two generic thugs named Dante (played by Manny Galan) and Carlos (played by Juvian Marquez), who break into Schuyler Self-Storage through a back entrance. Laurie sees this break-in through a video surveillance camera and notices that the invaders have guns. And so, the race for survival is on, as she and Clayton try to escape from the storage facility.
Clayton and Laurie (who work together and apart at various times) don’t have much time to get to know each other. But at one point, Laurie reveals to Clayton that she was the person driving when her parents were killed in a car accident. Laurie mentions it too casually, like someone who’s talking about what she had for breakfast that day. It’s an example of how the acting and directing for “Unit 234” are off-balance.
Why doesn’t Laurie call for help? Before the thugs invaded Schuyler Self-Storage, Laurie’s cell phone got broken when she fell down from fixing a pipe leak in another storage unit. The only landline phone in the building is an office phone, whose phone line gets cut by the criminals. The rest of “Unit 234” has chase scenes, gun shootouts, and mediocre-to-bad acting from cast members who look like they know they’re in a terrible movie. “Unit 234” is a movie that’s not worthy of keeping in storage but belongs in a trash bin.
Brainstorm Media released “Unit 234” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on May 9, 2025.
