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.

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.