From Jeremy Kibler

Spiders-run-amok movies are either creepy (Arachnophobia) or knowingly cheesy (Eight Legged Freaks, Big Ass Spider!). Aussie writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting falls somewhere in between but more so the former, resulting in a skillfully made creature feature that will certainly give easily squeamish audiences the willies. It’s expertly paced, inventively goopy and gross.

There’s a bad winter storm in New York City, but something inside a South Brooklyn apartment building with eight legs is much, much worse. Adventuring in the ventilation system, 12-year-old girl (Alyla Browne), deliberately named Charlotte, discovers a spider that lands in an egg from an alien planet. She thinks her new pet is so cool, learning it has a “feeding whistle” and the ability to mimic other noises, and names it Sting. Her mother, Heather (Penelope Mitchell), is always on work calls, and her stepdad, Ethan (Ryan Gorr), works tirelessly as a comic-book artist and lets her come up with ideas when he isn’t playing handyman for the building owned by a slumlord, Heather’s evil Aunt Gunter (a delightfully nasty Robyn Nevin). Heather’s Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, Helga (Noni Hazlehurst), is also a tenant in the building, always calling the exterminator (Jermaine Fowler). Unaware of just how dangerous her secret pet can be, Charlotte eventually can’t keep a leash on Sting, which increases in size and starts making the neighbors disappear. 

Following a very stylish title sequence in a dollhouse, Kiah Roache-Turner (who previously made the metal zombie flicks, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead and Wyrmwood: Apocalypse) knows exactly what kind of movie he is making: not a SyFy Original, but a monster movie that knows when to hold its tongue in cheek. For instance, mothballs and garbage compactors cleverly become our characters’ only hope.

A family drama mixed with a girl-and-her-animal story (not unlike a certain E.B. White classic), Sting unfolds entirely in a single location (save for exteriors standing in for New York). In a nice change of pace, teenage Charlotte and stepfather Ethan have a solid relationship, and it becomes the emotional core of the film. The Australian accents may slip out on occasion, but the cast is uniformly strong and in sync with the material, particularly Alyla Browne, who could easily be related to Lulu Wilson in the Becky movies. Even Jermaine Fowler’s exterminator Frank, while written mostly as comic relief, is amusing in small bursts and not the opening “Casey Becker” as expected.

A genre stand-by, like a conveniently failing flashlight when a character investigates a dark space, is forgivable here and there, particularly when it’s someone we know has it coming. Above everything else, the spider effects are spectacular, courtesy of WETA Workshop; though not always photorealistic, the tactile nature of practical f/x overrides the occasional CG enhancements. 

With well-drawn characters, a healthily quirky sense of humor, and a creepy-fun atmosphere, Sting excels as one of the better creepy-crawly creature features in recent memory.

Rating: 3.5/5

Sting hits theaters on April 12th, 2024.

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