The Plot: Charlotte (Alyla Browne) is writing a comic book, with her stepfather Ethan (Ryan Corr) illustrating. During a snowy winter’s day in New York, she encounters a curious spider. Unafraid, she bottles it and calls it Sting. Treating it like a pet, she feeds it and is unconcerned about it growing gradually larger. Unknown to Charlotte, Sting creeps out at night and feeds on whatever it can find including the pets of nearby neighbours. It soon graduates from pet to major hazard as it develops a taste for flesh…
The Verdict: Like sharks, spiders have a habit of becoming cinema’s occasional threat against its human characters. They’re small and more afraid of us than we are of them, but there’s still something unnerving about them. Arachnophobia was a particularly memorable entry in the spider sub-genre of horror, ramping up its heightened B-movie thrills with still effective and gooey special effects nearly 35 years later (an inevitable remake is on the way). There’s something of that same formula in Sting, a New York-set but Australian-made spider horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously from the opening sequence. A passing comet sends an alien visitor our way in the form of a super spider which has the ability to mimic sounds and devour its prey in a flash. That’s a 1950s B-movie set-up right there, clueing in the audience that Sting is no ordinary spider and gradually allows its characters to catch up on this.
Of course, the characters themselves are straight out of a B-movie, including an old lady with a short-term memory (handy for some light relief) and an imperious, heavily-accented neighbour who might have wandered off the set of a Dracula film shooting nearby. There’s even a nod to John Goodman’s character from Arachnophobia in the fearless but foolhardy exterminator Frank (Jermaine Fowler). Along with all this are numerous film references and a literary nod in the name of the main character – Charlotte (Alyla Browne, doubling down on her striking performance in Furiosa). Writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner weaves all this together with a knowing wink, as Sting grows to monstrous proportions and starts picking off the neighbours. Cellphones are typically useless and even with a snowstorm outside, nobody thinks of finding help or sending for the nearest SWAT team. That confined setting is predictable from a horror film, but what it does is allow Roache-Turner to exploit the dark, dingy apartment block and tight crawlspaces for some tense and often icky showdowns.
Roache-Turner isn’t trying to re-invent the spider horror film here. His script plays out exactly as one might expect it to, allowing the threat to grow to the point where even Charlotte has to acknowledge her monster pet is out of control. Sting itself is a mix of practical animatronics and visual effects from Weta, which complement each enough to suggest that the spider is a character in itself. That sort-of twisted bond between Charlotte (a somewhat odd girl to begin with) and the spider is what makes the film work that bit better than expected. It gives it more of an edge that might otherwise have been left to one side. It would have been easy for Roache-Turner to go all out here on the gore, but instead he leaves a good bit to suggestion. What the eye doesn’t see but the mind imagines is more terrifying – an old horror film trick that still holds water. Sting isn’t a particularly memorable film overall but that said, it’s an effectively creepy popcorn movie. It’s dressed up with modern trappings, knows its humble B-movie origins and runs with it for just enough chills and thrills to warrant a light recommendation.
Rating: 3 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor
In short: B-movie thrills
Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner.
Starring Alyla Browne, Ryan Corr, Jermaine Fowler, Noni Hazlehurst.