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Sting<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well Go USA Entertainment\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violent content, bloody images, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Kiah Roache-Turner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Kiah Roache-Turner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Anna Drubich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Brad Shield\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 12, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jermaine Fowler, Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Ryan Corr, Silvia Colloca, Noni Hazlehurst, Robyn Nevin, Danny Kim.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Last November, AMC hosted their first \u201cScreen Unseen\u201d event in which audiences get a first look at an upcoming release. The hook is that you don\u2019t know what movie you\u2019ll be seeing until the feature actually begins. They tell you the film\u2019s MPA rating beforehand, that\u2019s it. It\u2019s a fun little thing and it\u2019s only $5 per ticket.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I went to my first Screen Unseen the other night. It was actually a \u201cScream Unseen\u201d meaning the as-yet-unknown feature presentation would be a horror movie. I was hoping it would be The First Omen, but it wasn\u2019t. Instead I got to see Sting<\/strong>, a darkly comic creature feature written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood). While slightly disappointed they didn\u2019t show the Omen prequel, I was more than satisfied with what I got.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I\u2019m going to make a prediction. Please read the whole thing before you jump down my throat. I predict Sting<\/strong> will bomb at the box office. It\u2019s nothing to do with the quality of the film. It\u2019s pretty good actually. It\u2019s probably going to flop because it\u2019s too weird for mainstream audiences. People will show up expecting a conventional scary movie and they\u2019re going to be disappointed because Sting<\/strong> (an Australian production btw) is anything but. I do believe we\u2019re looking at a future cult movie, the third this year after Lisa Frankenstein and Drive-Away Dolls.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0A 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\u2019s 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\u2019s super, tries to bond with Charlotte by collaborating on a project with her. That goes as well as you\u2019d think. She\u2019s 12!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Charlotte is enamored with her new pet who she names \u201cSting\u201d after Bilbo\u2019s sword in The Hobbit. Never mind that she can\u2019t 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\u2019s not pretty.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0It hasn\u2019t been a great year for horror so far with losers like Night Swim and Imaginary. Last month\u2019s Immaculate was pretty good. So is Sting<\/strong>. Now you\u2019re probably thinking what\u2019s 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<\/strong> 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\u2019s when we know Sting<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The 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<\/strong>. The creature looks good and scary. There\u2019s plenty of gore and icky stuff too. This is what I want to see, not that CGI crap.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I can honestly say this is the first time I noticed Alyla Browne in a movie. I believe we\u2019re looking at a star in the making. She\u2019s 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\u2019s 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?).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Ordinarily, I might say that Fowler adds comic relief to the proceedings, but that\u2019s not necessarily true in this case. He\u2019s funny, no doubt, but so is a lot of Sting<\/strong>. It\u2019s 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\u2019s owner who also happens to be Charlotte\u2019s grandmother (on her mother\u2019s side). She\u2019s the stuff of nightmares, that woman.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Sting<\/strong> 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<\/strong> was perfect. I merely said it\u2019s 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!<\/p>\r\n Sting (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well Go USA Entertainment\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violent content, bloody images, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Kiah Roache-Turner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Kiah Roache-Turner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Anna Drubich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Brad Shield\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 12, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jermaine Fowler, Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Ryan Corr, Silvia Colloca, Noni Hazlehurst, Robyn Nevin, Danny Kim. Rating: *** \u00a0Last November, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Sting-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1010,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/1010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Sting-POSTER.jpg?resize=620%2C918&ssl=1\")
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