In Sting, unlike the arachnid creature-feature classic Arachnophobia, it doesn’t pay to bring a nail gun to a spider fight. Unlucky exterminator Frank (Jermaine Fowler) discovers the hard way, and as a comic foil, he’s also no John Goodman. In fact, the film’s weak attempts at injecting humor into this creepy crawly horror are a big part of what drains much of the life out of Sting. Writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner’s film has elements that work ‒ particularly its sense of atmosphere, moody lighting and deftly administered creature effects ‒ but it can’t quite weave them all together into something with the lasting power of a film like Arachnophobia.
In terms of proportion, the spider at the center of Roache-Turner’s film is more akin to the behemoths of Eight Legged Freaks, but unlike either of those spider horror forebears, Sting only focuses on a single monstrous arachnid. The spider in question is of extraterrestrial origin, falling from the sky and through an apartment window on a meteorite the size of a golf ball. He briefly takes up lodging in the antique dollhouse into which he’s crash-landed, before he’s discovered by a brash 12-year-old girl unsubtly named Charlotte (Alyla Browne), who scoops him up in a matchbox and steals back into the labyrinth of massive ventilation ducts that allow her to break into neighboring apartments at will. Charlotte begins feeding and observing her new pet, whom she names Sting after glancing at a copy of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and discovers that he is growing extremely rapidly and can do some un-spiderlike things such as mimic high-pitched noises.
The direction this is all going is obvious from the outset, as Sting, aided in part by the building’s peculiar biology student Erik (Danny Kim), grows absolutely massive and wreaks havoc. The maze of ludicrously enormous ventilation ducts, nearly big enough to rival the dimensions of a studio apartment in the film’s Brooklyn setting, make a perfect lair for the alien spider and give it easy access to fresh meat in each unit. Roache-Turner makes an admirable effort to develop his characters into more than just spider food and he employs considerable family drama amid all the mayhem. Charlotte’s senile grandmother, Helga (Noni Hazlehurst), lives in a neighboring flat with Charlotte’s perplexingly arch great aunt Gunter (Robyn Nevin), who owns the building. Gunter has thrown a bone to Charlotte’s struggling graphic novelist stepdad, Ethan (Ryan Corr), who helps manage the building for extra income. Ethan is frustrated professionally, and he’s driven to be a father to Charlotte, who still calls him by his first name, after he and Charlotte’s mom, Heather (Penelope Mitchell), have recently welcomed a new baby.
The problem is that these dramatic elements too often feel contrived, and despite capable acting performances, particularly from the young Browne, the interpersonal conflicts never feel particularly moving or even all that believable. After all, though Ethan so desires to connect with Charlotte, the girl already clearly adores him, as Heather even points out to him, and when we get the big emotional payoff after the climactic showdown with Sting in the air ducts, it’s been telegraphed from miles away. At one point, when Ethan breaks a television screen in frustration and claims he’s “losing it,” Heather’s assertion that “you’re not losing it, Ethan, you’re losing us” feels laughable for all the wrong reasons. If the film is overly serious in moments like this, at other times it plays things too loose. Helga’s implied dementia, for instance, isn’t used for any emotional impact but instead for plot expedience or, worse, for comic relief.
Despite its notable flaws, Sting is well-crafted enough to make for a relatively enjoyable midnight movie, especially for those viewers with a hankering for their creature features to be of the eight-legged variety. But unfortunately, it falters most when it tries and fails to be more than just the gory little horror trifle that it is.
Photo courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment
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