"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Sting

STING is a 2024 killer spider picture, but it’s not the French one that I already reviewed. That’s INFESTED. This one is set in New York City but hails from Australia. I remember seeing a trailer and being interested, I think I heard not-great things when it came out, but then when I saw it was on Hulu I noticed that the writer-director was Kiah Roache-Turner. That’s the guy that did WYRMWOOD: ROAD OF THE DEAD (2014) and WYRMWOOD: APOCALYPSE (2021), two fun movies about people roaming a post-apocalyptic world with cars powered by zombie breath. Well shit, yeah, I’ll watch his spider movie.

Just like he did in WYRMWOOD, Roache-Turner uses an absurd and inexplicable sci-fi disaster to set up the scenario he wants to tell a story within. A news broadcast tells us we’re in the midst of the worst ice storm in New York state history, and that it’s believed to be connected to the asteroid shower that came unusually close to Earth. During the opening credits a tiny rock from space shoots through an apartment window and a dollhouse inside the apartment.

The rock cracks open and a spider crawls out and through the floors of the miniature home. The sequence is very stylized, and foreshadows that this spider will grow to this scale in relation to the actual building, so I wasn’t sure until after the credits that yes, this literally happened in the story – a spider fell from the stars, like the Blob or the Body Snatch plants or Venom in SPIDER-MAN 3.

Rebellious 12-year-old Charlotte (Alyla Browne, THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING), who climbs through the vents between apartments (again, previewing something the spider will be doing), sneaks into the room, happens to find the spider, puts her in a jar and names her Sting, after Bilbo’s sword. Then the weird stuff starts to happen. This one’s less about “aren’t spiders creepy?” than “wouldn’t it be creepy if a spider did non-spider stuff?” Sting makes little chirps and breath sounds almost like a voice, her feet clank against the jar like a crab, Charlotte brings her roaches and is amazed at her ability to quickly cover them in green slime, and then she notices her mimicking sounds, including human voices. Terrifying. Or cool if you’re Charlotte.

All this very fantastical business is grounded in a family story. Charlotte’s mom Heather (Penelope Mitchell, HELLBOY 2019) is worn out from trying to work while raising the baby, Liam. Stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr, WOLF CREEK 2) is the building supervisor, dealing with the roach infestation and dilapidated plumbing by day, by night drawing a comic book written by Charlotte. It’s very sweet that they can work together on this, but there’s creative tension – she’s much more enthusiastic than he is about a character based on her biological dad, who she thinks is a saint, but he knows is a total deadbeat, and it makes him jealous. This is a hard working and well-meaning stepdad, who’s also a little more petty and apt to lose his shit than the usual “good guy” character, which I found interesting.

I was surprised to realize at one point that I was completely invested in the parenting drama and forgot about the spider. But of course she gets bigger and starts getting out and eating the building’s inhabitants. First it’s people’s pets, then it’s people. Because of Sting’s special skills and lack of a swarm I didn’t get the moderate to severe heebie jeebies that are a side effect of INFESTED, but there are some really high quality set pieces using the disturbing idea that Sting incapacitates her victims and then they have to watch what happens next. There’s a particular kill that’s horrifying enough to give me a real jolt, and another clever sequence where Charlotte is wearing headphones to block out an argument between her parents, so she doesn’t hear them being paralyzed and dragged away by her so-called friend Sting. Charlotte gets up and walks to get something while looking at her phone, almost seeing the mayhem, but not quite. This kind of thing can feel really forced, but I think they staged it just right.

Here’s a crazy thing about this movie. In the middle of it I was looking up the cast to see if I knew them from anything. Turned out I had seen Mitchell on Picard, another actor was in COMING 2 AMERICA. The one that really shocked me though is that Alyla Browne, who plays Charlotte, was the main character in a big chunk of the one movie I watched three times in 2024. Yes, she was young Furiosa! No wonder she looked like the darkest of angels, the fifth rider of the apocalypse. The thing is that in FURIOSA they digitally altered her eyes to turn gradually into Anya Taylor-Joy’s, that’s why I didn’t recognize her here. But once you know it you can see it. Anyway, as you can imagine from that credential, she’s a really good young actor, bringing credibility to this outlandish concept.

Of course there are other colorful characters to team up with Charlotte and/or become spider food: biology student Erik (Danny Kim, WAR MACHINE), who’s trying to cure cancer in his apartment but does not responsibly fulfill his duty as character-who-knows-scientific-stuff—and-can-figure-out-what-to-do; exterminator Frank (Jermaine Fowler, JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH), who’s a bit too much of a “wisecracking Black guy” stereotype, but has his moments; and Charlotte’s grandma Helga (Noni Hazlehurst, THE MULE [the Australian one, not the Clint one]), whose dementia helps bring Sting victims (for example she keeps calling different exterminators, forgetting that she already called others). Yeah, sorry to say, but if anybody’s gonna save the day, it’s probly gonna have to be the kid.

I personally wouldn’t allow this.

This is a really well put together movie, tightly written, stylishly designed and shot, a nice feel for the personality of this old building, and cool shots from outside the windows, moving between the floors and through the vents, etc. (Production designer: Fiona Donovan, a prop person on TOM YUM GOONG; director of photography: Brad Shield, THE SQUARE.) It’s slicker than the WYRMWOOD movies, though not as wildly imaginative, a little more normal. I might like it even better if it had a bigger, crazier finale, but that’s okay. It did the trick.

I will leave you with this. If you have kids, make sure they know: E.T. from space – friend. Spider from space – not your friend. It won’t work out. Don’t try it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 5th, 2024 at 7:09 am and is filed under Reviews, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

6 Responses to “Sting”

  1. So that’s why they played the trailer before FURIOSA (at least here), which, btw, was for me the most unpleasant part of that day at the movies. Are spiders becoming the new sharks? There seems to be a wave of spider themed horror movies these days.

  2. I liked this one better than INFESTED. I’m not an arachnophobe, so I get more out of a killer spider that acts like a movie monster than one that just acts like a spider. This one had more personality than the ones in INFESTED, and I liked the characters more than the obnoxious ones in INFESTED.

  3. Spiders are great, and it’s easiest to carry them outside on the hand, as shown in that photograph.

    E. T. was a representation of the trusted, gentle, kind molester, the one whose deeds get revealed after 20 years and make all shake heads and say “Well, we never thought!” – a la Savile. It would have been expanded even further with the Asogians in the unfinished “Nocturnal Fears”, planned when Spielberg was feeling even angrier than he was at the time of “E. T.”.

  4. I just finished watching this movie, based on learning of it’s existence here and having finally gotten Hulu. I thought it was great! This movie was very well tuned to my particular sensibilities in more than a few ways- I like spiders and go out of my way not to kill them, ever since I heard that spiders can dream, and got to observe one jumping spider that lived in my garage, observing me in return and eating the stink bugs and ladybugs that hung out there. Also I have some kind of small scratching creature currently living in my wall, and I went to school to draw comics and had worked nights drawing like that guy.

    It might be weird to compliment the sound design for a movie (or maybe not, I guess they have a whole category for it in the Oscars) but I really enjoyed the way they did the chirping skittering spider stuff as well as the random creepy digital coiling monster bass NIN sounds added to establishing shots, to bolster the mood. The intro credits song was good too, as was the whole credits sequence. It was funny that the “dinnertime” whistle/chirp was the exact same first two notes that Gizmo sings to Billy, that couldn’t be a coincidence.

    Which leads me to- this movie was so ALIENS coded! You got the spirit of it but also some specific homages, like Newt running around in the air ducts, but also Ripley locking and loading and going back to save people, the emotionless science officer who sees the perfect organism, the steam and the secreted resin with the long insect appendage dangling slowly into view, a “game over man!” meltdown moment from a comic relief character, and there was almost a verbatim “get away from her you BITCH!” (which all oddly felt MORE naturally in the spirit of ALIEN/S than the actual callbacks in ALIEN ROMULUS.) But more than just that, it felt like a blend of pieces of ALIENS, PREDATOR (Frank does the same line variation on “if it bleeds we can kill it”), TERMINATOR, and GREMLINS, without feeling like it was trying too hard to force reference to them. The perfect amount of wink at the inspiration while doing your own organic thing, and keeping an otherwise straight face throughout. I prefer this much more than naming the lead character something like Cameron McTiernan or whatever.

    Frank the exterminator dipped briefly into Marlon Wayans from SCARY MOVIE before his denouement but I did like the intro leading into the last scene showing there was more movie for him. The autistic scientist guy was a bit much, though I simultaneously rolled my eyes and genuinely chuckled when he went full mad scientist, I fully expected a muah ha haaa villain laugh. The lead actress was great though, as well as the step dad, the whole movie depends on them selling that nearly worn out Hollywood stepdad bonding but they both made it seem genuine enough. And it’s weird- I hate a heavy “I’m sad because of my poor dead kid” storyline as lazy characterization but the neighbor lady character went super light on that seasoning and it worked, but also I LOVE when there’s a good “look out, that monster gonna eat the baby/monster eats all the pets” plotline and they do a good job with this one, again threading the needle of suspense with subtle background action/scene setting while not overdoing it. I think all of Chekov’s guns get fired here. And I loved how the spider was as theatrical as Hannibal Lecter in staging not one but two strung up blood eagled corpses of a housepet.

    And no monster alien insect movie could be accepted without including the ending shot of this movie. It’s state law. But that’s ok because I’m definitely gonna show up for STINGS. Thanks for the heads up on this, Vern!

  5. Korel- “E. T. was a representation of the trusted, gentle, kind molester” is the kind of film scholar understanding for which I will gladly pay Xfinity to deliver to my screen, thank you for this bonus.

  6. Saw this on a whim in October during my annual Halloween “Horror Hibernation” catch-up movie marathon and what an absolute treat! I’m glad that you pointed out being invested in the family drama, that all totally worked for me as well; the characters had a lot of dimension to them and felt like real people! Also, as a parent of a 2 year old, any infant in peril is instant nightmare fuel. Whew boy, what a treat and such a 50’s drive-in throwback!

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