Sting (2024) Well Go USA Entertainment/Horror-Thriller RT: 91 minutes Rated R (violent content, bloody images, language) Director: Kiah Roache-Turner Screenplay: Kiah Roache-Turner Music: Anna Drubich Cinematography: Brad Shield Release date: April 12, 2024 (US) Cast: Jermaine Fowler, Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Ryan Corr, Silvia Colloca, Noni Hazlehurst, Robyn Nevin, Danny Kim.
Rating: ***
Last November, AMC hosted their first “Screen Unseen” event in which audiences get a first look at an upcoming release. The hook is that you don’t know what movie you’ll be seeing until the feature actually begins. They tell you the film’s MPA rating beforehand, that’s it. It’s a fun little thing and it’s only $5 per ticket.
I went to my first Screen Unseen the other night. It was actually a “Scream Unseen” meaning the as-yet-unknown feature presentation would be a horror movie. I was hoping it would be The First Omen, but it wasn’t. Instead I got to see Sting, a darkly comic creature feature written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood). While slightly disappointed they didn’t show the Omen prequel, I was more than satisfied with what I got.
I’m going to make a prediction. Please read the whole thing before you jump down my throat. I predict Sting will bomb at the box office. It’s nothing to do with the quality of the film. It’s pretty good actually. It’s probably going to flop because it’s too weird for mainstream audiences. People will show up expecting a conventional scary movie and they’re going to be disappointed because Sting (an Australian production btw) is anything but. I do believe we’re looking at a future cult movie, the third this year after Lisa Frankenstein and Drive-Away Dolls.
A small meteorite crashes through a window in an old, rundown New York apartment building. It cracks open and out comes a spider. The alien arachnid is found by Charlotte (Browne, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart), a lonely and creative 12YO who staves off boredom by crawling through the building’s air ducts like a mini-Bruce Willis. She lives with her mother (Mitchell, Hemlock Grove) and stepdad (Corr, House of the Dragon) who are too preoccupied with work and her baby brother to pay her much mind. Stepdad Ethan, a comic book artist who moonlights as the building’s super, tries to bond with Charlotte by collaborating on a project with her. That goes as well as you’d think. She’s 12!
Charlotte is enamored with her new pet who she names “Sting” after Bilbo’s sword in The Hobbit. Never mind that she can’t find any information about this unknown species of spider on-line. She figures out a few things on her own: (1) he can mimic sounds, (2) he has an abnormal growth rate and (3) he has a healthy appetite….. for flesh. He starts off with insects, but moves onto bigger things (pets, people) as he grows and grows and GROWS! Once that happens, it’s not pretty.
It hasn’t been a great year for horror so far with losers like Night Swim and Imaginary. Last month’s Immaculate was pretty good. So is Sting. Now you’re probably thinking what’s so good about another deadly spider flick. How is it any different from Kingdom of the Spiders, Arachnophobia or Eight Legged Freaks? Or, for that matter, The Giant Spider Invasion? I enjoyed all of them for different reasons, but Sting has an identity all its own. This is established in the opening scene when an exterminator (comedian Fowler) responds to a call from an elderly, senile resident (Hazlehurst, Ladies in Black) reporting strange noises. He enters her apartment to find the bloodied bodies of rival exterminators by the air vent. When he tries to take a closer look, something pulls him in. The woman goes back to what she was doing only to hear more noises from the walls. She then grabs the phone book to call another exterminator. That’s when we know Sting has a wicked and warped sense of humor. This is what sets it apart from other spider movies, even the tongue-in-cheek Eight Legged Freaks.
The special effects are the work of Weta Workshop, the New Zealand-based FX outfit whose work can be seen in Meet the Feebles, Dead Alive, The Frighteners and the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit trilogies. I was glad to see they utilized practical effects for Sting. The creature looks good and scary. There’s plenty of gore and icky stuff too. This is what I want to see, not that CGI crap.
I can honestly say this is the first time I noticed Alyla Browne in a movie. I believe we’re looking at a star in the making. She’s great as Charlotte, a kid dealing with a lot of complicated emotions as she navigates her way through a changing family landscape. Her bio-dad is (supposedly) in Thailand for work while her stepdad tries to make a connection with her through their shared knack for drawing. She often feels ignored because of her baby brother, someone she sees as representative of Mom’s new family. Is it any wonder she adopts a pet that turns out to be dangerous? Anyway, it looks like Browne has a bright future ahead with roles in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (WHY?).
Ordinarily, I might say that Fowler adds comic relief to the proceedings, but that’s not necessarily true in this case. He’s funny, no doubt, but so is a lot of Sting. It’s funny in a bizarre kind of way. Some of the characters, like the weird Asian biology student (Kim, Born to Spy) who lives upstairs, are positively unreal. That description also applies to Gunter (Nevin, The Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions), the building’s owner who also happens to be Charlotte’s grandmother (on her mother’s side). She’s the stuff of nightmares, that woman.
Sting is very creepy and atmospheric making it an effective horror movie, but the non-serious approach taken by Turner makes it a singular viewing experience. The addition of family-type drama is a bit clumsy, but I never said Sting was perfect. I merely said it’s better than other recent horror films. Besides, how can I possibly trash a movie about an alien spider? I live for this kind of thing!
