Creature features are some of horror’s most zany. In the 1990s, films like Arachnophobia, Lake Placid, Deep Blue Sea, and Anaconda ruled the screen. Audiences reveled in stories of alligators, giant snakes, and genius sharks massacring communities.
These movies weren’t masterpieces, but they had charm—they didn’t take themselves too seriously, the comedy was nicely dosed within the narrative, and they were pretty much made for sheer fun. This is why I was looking forward to Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting. A flick about a giant extraterrestrial spider terrorizing a Brooklyn apartment block during a blizzard sounded like the rejuvenation of creature features moviegoers needed.
However, Roache-Turner misses the mark here. While the skeletal structure of a fun creature feature is there, Sting is all over the place tonally with unlikable characters, racial stereotypes, and a glaring hesitation to go all-out, despite its R rating.
Sting begins with a century-defining snow and ice storm in Brooklyn. An asteroid breaks apart and a tiny piece crashes through the window of troubled Charlotte’s (Alyla Browne) apartment. A small spider is born from the steaming rock in a clever opening title sequence (the film’s best moment).
Charlotte quickly takes the arachnid in as her own, hiding it from her mother Heather (Penelope Mitchell), and comic book artist stepfather Ethan (Ryan Corr). Charlotte—bratty and angry at the abscence of her real father, despite Ethan’s unrelenting kindness—finds solace in the spider’s presence, naming it “Sting” after Bilbo Baggins’ sword in The Hobbit. She feeds Sting the roaches that inhabit the building, and is awestruck in realizing that the spider is growing by the hour. As Sting grows, pets begin to get horrifically killed—and soon, so do the neighbors.
The film’s Australian production is an underlying issue with this feature—despite being set in Brooklyn, it’s clear to an American eye that we are not actually in Brooklyn.
Our American characters, played by Aussies, can’t quite hide their accents, leading to dialogue that comes out forced (most notably in Mitchell’s unplatable performance). Setting this feature in an Australian city—say Perth, Melbourne, or Sydney—would have been more genuine. In addition, the racial stereotypes of Americans in Sting is glaringly apparent, specifically in exterminator Frank (Jermaine Fowler) and alcoholic neighbor Maria (Silvia Colloca). While these characters are supposed to serve as “comic relief”, their implementation comes off as tasteless and strange.
It’s evident that Sting couldn’t understand what tone it should’ve stuck to—it’s all over the place. A comedic undercurrent or a serious spider flick would’ve done just fine; fostering both just doesn’t work.
We’re given a subplot of Charlotte and Ethan’s emotional struggle to connect as father and daughter which—amongst wacky characters, snide jokes, and a whistling behemoth spider—is misplaced. A touching moment in the final act between the duo is cringeworthy cheesy, when in fact in could’ve been sweet if the tone had stayed consistent throughout the feature.
Sting doesn’t offer much for scares, either, despite its marketing.
For those horror fans with an aversion to animal violence—skip this one. Macaw, cat, rat, and rabbit deaths are played for cheap scares and laughs. It’s not effective, it’s just icky.
Again, the tone here comes off as just… weird. If they wanted effective frights, they should’ve shown deaths of the human inhabitants of the apartment block, which happen off-screen in splatters of blood. Show us what the spider can do! Dropping the cat’s mangled body in a spool of green, gooey web in front of Charlotte just doesn’t do it.
Roache-Turner had the R rating to go all-out for his creature feature—and several opportunities to show some sick body horror—but fell flat.
Now, despite my critiques with this spidery yarn, the bones of a great flick are there. Sting’s final battle with Charlotte is a pretty fun watch, and the concept of the movie itself is enticing. Corr’s performance as Ethan is good, too—noticably the best in the film.
But the details of Sting just didn’t come together to make a cohesive and likable creature feature, which, in my opinion, is a damn shame.
Sting
2024
dir. Kiah Roache-Turner
91 min.
Opens Friday, 4/12 @ AMC Boston Common, Assembly Row, and South Bay Center
