STING (2024)

Studio:   Well Go USA
Director: Kiah Roache-Turner
Writer:   Kiah Roache-Turner
Producer: Jamie Hilton, Michael Pontin, Chris Brown
Stars:    Ryan Corr, Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Robyn Nevin, Noni Hazlehurst, Silvia Colloca, Danny Kim, Jermaine Fowler

Review Score:

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Summary:

A precocious girl inadvertently unleashes havoc in her family's apartment building by secretly making a pet out of a mutant spider that grows into a massive monster.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

An asteroid storm over South Brooklyn sends a mutant spider egg through the window of Gunter, a stern German woman who runs an old apartment building where she lives with her elderly sister Helga. Helga's granddaughter Charlotte Krouse, who lives in the building with her mother Heather, baby brother Liam, and stepfather Ethan Miller, sneaks into Helga and Gunter's apartment through the vents and finds the spider that hatches from the egg. Deciding to name it Sting after Bilbo's sword in "The Hobbit," Charlotte secretly takes the spider as a pet.

Ethan, a struggling artist who reluctantly works as Gunter's building maintenance supervisor to help make ends meet, works on his latest comic book collaboration with Charlotte, through which they continue to bond. However, Charlotte is later disappointed to learn Ethan made changes to a character she based on her biological father.

Beginning to grow in size after Charlotte feeds it a cockroach, Sting crawls through the vents into Helga and Gunter's apartment where it gruesomely kills their pet parrot. Concerned about rats or a possible infestation due to the bird's strange death, Gunter and Ethan call exterminator Frank to spray the building.

Still growing in size, Sting sneaks into an apartment belonging to grieving widow Maria and paralyzes her with its venom. Sting then mutilates Maria's body from the inside out.

Charlotte visits building resident Erik, an odd recluse known for keeping fish, to buy an aquarium for Sting. Alarmed upon seeing Charlotte's unusual spider, Erik bargains to temporarily keep Sting for private study in exchange for a free fishtank.

Ethan discovers Maria's dead body when he attempts to return her dog Bonnie. Erik then informs Ethan about Charlotte's deadly pet spider, which Erik believes is an issue for the Health Dept.

Ethan angrily confronts Charlotte about secretly keeping a deadly spider in their apartment. Charlotte retaliates by insulting Ethan's artistry. His own emotions triggered, Ethan reveals Charlotte's biological father actually lives nearby, not in Thailand, but he does not wish to see Charlotte. Charlotte storms away in tears. Heather admonishes Ethan, who quickly feels remorseful.

Ethan learns from his publisher Sandy that he has been taken off his latest project because his maintenance work caused him to deliver artwork late. Ethan becomes further frustrated when he is fired as a handyman by Gunter, who insults Ethan by saying he is not a true member of their family. Shortly thereafter, Sting captures Gunter and strings her up with webs inside the ventilation system.

Ethan gets into another argument with Heather after his frustration causes him to punch their malfunctioning television. Sting interrupts the couple's confrontation by paralyzing them with venom, pulling them away, and webbing them up in the vents with their baby boy Liam.

Charlotte discovers Sting, now grown to the size of a large dog, has caused the chaos in her building. Armed with a homemade mothball mixture that both repels Sting and dissolves its webs, Charlotte ventures into the vents to search for her family. Along the way, Charlotte finds Erik's dead body webbed to the ceiling of his apartment.

Charlotte rescues Ethan. Sting then follows the two of them into the building's basement where they reconcile their earlier argument with Ethan assuring Charlotte the situation is not her fault and they will fix it together.

Having been summoned back to building only to be attacked by Sting, exterminator Frank falls into the basement with Ethan and Charlotte. Due to his frantic behavior, Frank triggers the sprinkler system, which washes off everyone's mothball repellent. Sting subsequently kills Frank.

Ethan and Charlotte finally find Heather and Liam. The family then lures Sting into a trap where the spider gets crushed. Afterward, everyone reconciles as Charlotte calls Ethan "Dad" for the first time. However, the camera pans to show that Sting laid dozens of eggs and one of them is beginning to hatch.

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Review:

French film "Infested" (review here) was a strictly serious thriller that made viewers feel their skin crawl through largely realistic arachnid action set in an old apartment building. "Sting" takes place in an apartment building too, yet it delivers spider-centric chills with a bit of a matinee movie tone, like Joe Dante does horror except with more entertainment-minded wickedness than family-friendly whimsy.

The South Brooklyn building in "Sting" houses characters like oddball German sisters Gunter and Helga, grieving widow Maria, and socially awkward Erik, but the story's heartbeat comes from 12-year-old Charlotte and her stepfather Ethan. Ethan is a struggling artist married to Helga's daughter Heather, and since their six-month-old son adds another mouth to feed, Ethan also makes ends meet as an overworked maintenance man for taskmaster Gunter. Although she still hopes to reconnect with her biological father who is supposedly off in Thailand, Charlotte generally gets along with Ethan. They've even collaborated on a comic book before, and are doing so again, in between Charlotte's regular rounds of sneaking into various apartments by crawling through conveniently spacious ventilation ducts.

Charlotte and Ethan establish a cute relationship, but not in the commonly cloying Hollywood manner where they're seen tickling, giggling, or speaking to each other like familiar friends rather than parent and child. Early on, Heather leans in a doorway to sweetly spy Charlotte in Ethan's lap as they create a comic character together. Sounds cliche on paper, but the moment isn't meant as an "aw, aren't they adorable" scene so much as a means to mention Charlotte has another dad, because that's who she based that character on.

Where most movies take a basic route to blow through their first acts before getting to the fun stuff, "Sting" provides background information a better way. No one says anything like, "Hey sis, can you watch my newborn while I work my second job tonight? You know I'm going to have to drive our unreliable car through a snowstorm, too," or something that similarly offers exposition with words no human being would realistically say. "Sting" instead delivers details organically, through conversations where characters talk to each other, not to the audience. Even when the family expresses emotions of heated anger, they are honest interactions born out of believable frustrations causing conflict between bruised egos.

Of course, "Sting" isn't overstuffed with an inordinate amount of family drama at the expense of the creepy-crawly carnage viewers came for. Writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner remains well aware of what people want most out of the movie, he simply sets up good reasons to emotionally invest in the chaos first.

While poking around her grandma and great-aunt's apartment, Charlotte finds a spider that hatched after a passing asteroid storm launched an unusual egg through the window. Inspired by Bilbo's sword, Charlotte names her new eight-legged pet 'Sting.' Feeding it cockroaches, Charlotte starts raising Sting in secret, though it isn't long before the little creature grows into a big beast that begins eating animals before graduating to humans that get paralyzed with venom, pulled into the walls, and spun into unbreakable webs.

"Sting" may only have one spider, but don't be fooled into thinking it can't compete with what happens in "Infested," or any other arachnophobic flick, for that matter. "Sting" is a smaller movie in more ways than one, yet Roache-Turner makes the scope and the stakes feel much bigger thanks to a camera that's constantly moving through a creative layout of colorful rooms populated by colorful people. All of the actors are really good in their varied roles, with splashes of dark comedy percolating below the surface without becoming distracting enough to risk rocking the boat of slick midnight frights. And with constant motion keeping eyes engaged on the screen, "Sting" never seems to slow down, even when it's briefly on pause for critical character building that makes manic moments meaningful.

Appreciators of Kiah Roache-Turner's previous films like "Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead" (review here) and "Wyrmwood: Apocalypse" (review here) should be as pleased as me to see him applying his sharp style and fast-paced plotting to a project that's more scaled down, yet still streaked with swaths of wild flair. This modest change of pace makes for a comparatively simple, yet completely satisfying movie that's ideal for casual weekend viewing when you just want a to-the-point, classic creature feature that's finely fitted for a modern sense of cinema.

Review Score: 75

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