Here is a fairly watchable thriller about a fine arts and philosophy graduate called Laurie (Isabelle Fuhrman), who is turning 25 and facing a quarter-life crisis. She’s going nowhere fast in a job managing a storage facility in the middle of nowhere, with few customers and fewer uses for that liberal arts degree. Her boyfriend is ticked off by her refusal to spread her wings and join him in Nashville, but she’s got family issues tying her to the place, issues that are about to pale in comparison with the problems she will face courtesy of some tough types rocking up to make her life a living hell.
As the resourceful Laurie, Fuhrman makes for an appealing lead, and a good example of how your breakout role can subtly define the course of your career. At the age of 11 she delivered one of the great child performances in the slickly made 2009 horror Orphan, which set the tone for the kind of work she has found since. Among other things, Unit 234 is a reminder of how great she is, with a toughness and conviction that you itch to see made use of in a wider range of roles.
Not that she’s not having fun in genre films. Also having fun, we find Miami Vice’s Don Johnson as a tough-guy property developer who wants to get his hands on what is inside the lock-up at any cost, and Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) as a mysterious man who turns out to have been stashed in said lock-up. Laurie teams up with him against the property developer and his goons, making for an underdogs v baddies showdown with some decent twists up its sleeves, about which it would be uncharitable to say too much. It’s not an all-time classic, but it’ll keep you guessing.