★★★
Sting is a playful apartment block spider horror, with dashes of wit, tension and gore.
There’s a long and glorious tradition of spider horror movies. Sometimes the spiders are huge, as in Tarantula (1955), Eight Legged Freaks (2002) or Abyssal Spider (2020) or Big Ass Spider (2013). They can be aliens (The Giant Spider Invasion, 1975) or, well, a possessed puppet (Possum, 2018). Sometimes they’re simply very poisonous or very numerous, as in Kingdom of the Spiders, or Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (both 1977). The best spider movie of all time falls into that latter category – Arachnophobia (1990).
2024 has already given us a great “very poisonous and very numerous” spider movie in the form of Infested (aka Vermines). Now we have a new entry in the “very poisonous, very big, plus it’s an alien” category: Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting.
In Sting an (initially) small alien spider shoots across outer space, down through our atmosphere, and in through the window of an apartment block where it’s discovered by an awkward young girl named Charlotte (Alyla Browne). Seeking a distraction from the family tensions between her mother (Penelope Mitchell) and stepfather (Ryan Corr), Charlotte decides to raise the ‘spider’ as a pet, only for it to begin to grow and grow and start to pick off her neighbours one by one. Can the alien arachnid be stopped, and can the family find peace?
The cast is rounded out by Robyn Nevin, Noni Hazelhurst, Silvia Colloca, Danny Kim, and Jermaine Fowler, who all do solid work.
The best part of Sting, by far, are the first seven minutes, which operate as a perfect little short in themselves (and I suspect that’s how they were originally conceived and shot). They follow an old lady with Alzheimer’s as she attempts to book an exterminator to come and deal with the banging in her walls, and this cold opening is shot with an almost energy and wit that brings to mind Sam Raimi or Jean-Pierre Jaunet.
After that it calms down a bit, and the result is an enjoyable bughunt romp, albeit one with moments of unexpected gore. The spider design is decent, there’s an occasional good gag, and the climax is enjoyably tense. The more serious “dysfunctional family” subplot doesn’t necessarily mesh well with the goofier monster movie elements, but overall it’s good fun, and well worth a watch. The “small girl raises a monster” aspect even reminded me of Alligator in some ways, which is praise indeed! So if you like your horror playful and multi-legged, check it out.
Sting will be released in theaters in the United States and Canada on April 12, 2024, and in the UK on April 31.
Whitlock&Pope 