Unit 234

Laurie Saltair, 25, has stalled out after college. With degrees in Fine Arts and Philosophy, she had once dreamed of galleries and writing, but now she works at her family’s desolate self-storage facility on the outskirts of town. Her father’s recent illness has left her to manage the night shifts alone in a sprawling maze of locked steel doors, dusty corridors, flickering fluorescents, and decaying security monitors. She's grown used to long silences, mice scratching behind walls, and odd late-night renters.

One evening, as a thunderstorm begins to roll in, a man in a gray hoodie arrives. He’s intense, pale, jittery insists that he needs to access Unit 234, despite it being officially marked as sealed and unpaid. Laurie refuses. The man becomes aggressive, but eventually leaves. Her curiosity piqued, Laurie checks the system and finds something strange, Unit 234 isn’t supposed to exist. It has no record, but it’s clearly real on the cameras, it’s a large, heavily padlocked space in one of the furthest wings of the facility.

Driven by gut instinct, Laurie makes her way to Unit 234. The hall leading to it is unnervingly quiet. She pries open the padlock using bolt cutters and forces the door open.

A man, Clayton, is strapped to a gurney inside a refrigerated cargo crate. He’s shirtless, unconscious, shivering. An incision down his side reveals a roughly stitched, partially healed surgical wound, his kidney has been removed. Blood crusts the edges of the cut, and medical tape is flaking off. Next to him, a bloodied cooler, empty IV bags, syringes, and ominous surgical tools, some stained, some new.

Laurie tries to call the police, but the storm has knocked out reception. She manages to drag Clayton out of the container and lock the unit behind her, but within minutes, headlights appear in the lot. A black van pulls in and four figures emerge, armed and moving with terrifying precision. They're not just criminals they're part of a black market organ trafficking ring, and Unit 234 was their hidden operating room.

The gang enters the facility. They are cold, violent, and surgical in their hunt. One of them, Cruz, the leader, has an unsettling calmness, he moves like a surgeon and speaks like a businessman. Another, Maria, is brutal and unflinching, carrying a sawed-off shotgun and a medical bone saw in a bag. Their goal is retrieve Clayton alive, they need his second kidney.

Laurie hides Clayton in another storage unit and uses her knowledge of the facility to lay traps, dropped shelves, baited alarms, broken lights. The halls become a darkened gauntlet of cat-and-mouse horror. One of the intruders, Ryder, gets caught in one of her improvised snares and trips a security shutter that slams onto his head, crushing his skull and trapping his twitching body beneath the steel.

Another, Kyle, finds Clayton’s blood trail and almost succeeds in taking him until Laurie smashes a fire extinguisher into his face, knocking him back into a utility elevator shaft, where he falls and lands on the metal grid below. When she checks his body, his jaw has shattered and teeth are embedded in his throat.

Maria eventually finds them and chases Laurie through the power tunnels beneath the units. In the narrow dark, Laurie fights back, stabbing Maria with a jagged curtain rod. In the brutal struggle, Maria fires off her shotgun, blasting a chunk of Laurie’s shoulder, but Laurie manages to wrench the saw from Maria’s bag and drives it into her stomach, the sound of grinding flesh echoing through the halls as Maria dies screaming in a pool of blood.

Laurie and Clayton try to escape through the storm-drained back corridor. Cruz corners them and knocks Laurie unconscious. When she awakens, she finds herself in Unit 234 chained to the gurney where Clayton had been, with surgical tools beside her and Cruz calmly preparing for an “extraction.” He tells her that she's young and healthy, and Clayton's second kidney is failing. He plans to take hers.

But Laurie had pocketed a shard of broken mirror earlier. As Cruz prepares the anesthetic, she slices through her bonds and stabs him in the neck. Cruz stumbles backward, choking on his own blood. Laurie grabs his surgical knife and finishes him with a precision slash across the throat.

Laurie helps Clayton limp outside just as emergency services finally arrive, alerted by backup generators sending distress signals when power was lost. By dawn, police investigate the facility and uncover a grotesque network of hidden medical operations. Laurie, battered, bloodied, but alive, gives her statement and watches as they wheel out body bags and confiscate equipment. She knows she'll never be the same but she also knows that she saved a man’s life and took down something monstrous. The experience awakened a fierce survival instinct in her.

• Isabelle Fuhrman as Laurie Saltair
• Don Johnson as Jules
• Jack Huston as Clayton
• James DuMont as Leon{{cite web|last=Grobar|first=Matt|title= 'Unit 234', 'The Bayou', 'Flying Shadow', 'A Haitian Wedding', 'Shoulder Dance' Castings; HBO Max's Asian Pacific American Visionaries Finalists; Acquisitions By Gravitas, Freestyle; More – Film Briefs|date=May 6, 2022|website=Deadline Hollywood|url= https://deadline.com/2022/05/unit-234-the-bayou-flying-shadow-castings-film-briefs-1235014386/|access-date=May 30, 2022}}
• Christopher James Baker as Doc
• Manny Galan as Dante
• Juvian Marquez as Carlos
• Anirudh Pisharody as Jordan

Filming occurred in the Cayman Islands in April 2022.{{cite web|last=Grobar|first=Matt|title=Isabelle Fuhrman Boards Thriller 'Unit 234' From Director Andy Tennant|date=April 22, 2022|website=Deadline Hollywood|url=https://deadline.com/2022/04/isabelle-fuhrman-boards-thriller-unit-234-from-director-andy-tennant-1235008161/|access-date=May 4, 2022}} In May 2022, it was announced that Jack Huston joined the cast of the film.{{cite web|last=Grobar|first=Matt|title=Jack Huston Boards Andy Tennant Thriller 'Unit 234'|date=May 2, 2022|website=Deadline Hollywood|url=https://deadline.com/2022/05/jack-huston-boards-andy-tennant-thriller-unit-234-1235014436/|access-date=May 4, 2022}}

It was released on digital platforms in the United Kingdom by Signature Entertainment on September 30, 2024.{{Cite web|last=Bray |first=Catherine |date=2024-09-25 |title=Unit 234: The Lock Up review – storage facility holds deadly secrets in fun thriller |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/sep/25/unit-234-the-lock-up-review-storage-facility-holds-deadly-secrets-in-fun-thriller |access-date=2025-04-14 |website=The Guardian}} It was released in the United States by Brainstorm Media on May 9, 2025.{{Cite web |last=London |first=Rob |date=2025-04-08 |title=Don Johnson Wages a Storage War in First 'Unit 234' Trailer [Exclusive] |url=https://collider.com/don-johnson-unit-234-trailer/ |access-date=2025-04-14 |website=Collider}}

{{Rotten Tomatoes prose|62|8.5|13|consensus=|access-date=June 4, 2025|ref=y}}{{cite web|title=Unit 234 (2024) |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/unit_234 |website=Rotten Tomatoes |access-date=June 4, 2025}}

Hannah Rose of CBR gave the film a rating of 6 out of 10 and she said; It's not a classic, but at the very least Unit 234 shows just how much both its actors and its director are capable of, when given the chance.{{cite web|last=Rose |first=Hannah |title=Unit 234 Is a Subversive Thriller Movie With the Most Unexpected Cast |url=https://www.cbr.com/unit-234-movie-review/ |website=CBR |date=May 9, 2025 |access-date=June 4, 2025}}

Monique Jones of Common Sense Media gave the film a positive feedback and wrote; This is pretty standard, serviceable action-thriller fare.{{cite web|last=Jones |first=Monique |title=Parents' Guide to Unit 234 |url=https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/unit-234 |website=Common Sense Media |date=May 9, 2025 |access-date=June 4, 2025}}

An original score of B- was given by Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com and he wrote; “Unit 234” actually makes its way to refreshingly dark final act, and the actors assembled mostly understand what’s required of them, getting the offering to moments of misery that are more compelling than the usual in chases and near-misses.{{cite web|last=Orndorf |first=Brian |title=Unit 234 review |url=https://www.blu-ray.com/Unit-234/1962880/#Review |website=Blu-ray.com |date=May 7, 2025 |access-date=June 4, 2025}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{Official website|https://brainmedia.com/catalog/1/product/unit-234}}
• {{IMDb title}}

{{Andy Tennant}}

Category:American thriller films

Category:Films directed by Andy Tennant

Category:Films scored by George Fenton

Category:Films shot in the Cayman Islands