Sting
After raising an unnervingly talented spider in secret, 12-year-old Charlotte must face the facts about her pet — and fight for her family’s survival — when the once-charming creature rapidly transforms into a giant, flesh-eating monster.
Creature features don’t need to do a whole lot to win us over. They could fall short in virtually everything that doesn’t have anything to do with its monster and still triumph in its audience’s hearts. Sometimes plot, pacing or drama comes secondary to us on the page, before the screen, and seated before the screen if the monster promised delivers.
Sting knows what its audience wants but has a little trouble splitting that between what it wants to do. But what it attempts is admirable, and almost pulls off flawlessly. Which is to say that it wants to be a monster movie featuring a self-contained community like a mash of Evil Dead Rise and Blue Monkey, aiming for the comedic and dramatic effects of both. Director Kiah Roache-Turner certainly knows how to set the film apart from its clear influences, but the beats can be felt in its rough structure. Depending on who you ask, Sting actually improves on the feel its setting brings between it and Evil Dead Rise.
It manages to be just as interesting as the farmer’s relationship drama, but may focus a little too much on that aspect of the film’s story. Charlotte, our 12-year-old main character, is a wonderfully realized young girl stuck in the middle of her parents separation who just happens to come across a species of venomous spider from a different world. Her early identification with it, whom she names Sting (after Bilbo Baggins’s sword), strikes a chord as someone who doesn’t feel like they belong. It’s loose and a little messy but what Sting sets out to do honestly isn’t too bad in the long run.
The film’s tone establishes early on as something more tongue-in-cheek and outwardly comedic which could be why the drama included can feel tacked-on or out of place. The family drama used within is very well-worn and does have trouble feeling genuine despite the unique relationship between Charlotte and Ethan, a comic book illustrator drawing and lettering stories written by his stepdaughter.
It feels like director Roache-Turner has found themselves stuck between making a fun creature feature and trying to honor the legitimacy of an emotional core to fuel the former. This is a situation where there are simply one too many ingredients, but the end result is so close and in sight for a successful dish of a flick that you can almost taste it between the opening credit sequence and the end title crawl. But for what it has in its titular monster, it serves some good thrills in a fun way and has a kill that made me think back on Fulci’s tarantula scene from The Beyond.
For a killer creature movie within the horror subgenre that is frequently inundated with forgettable and pathetic, misguided entries, Sting does well to stand on its own eight feet despite its balancing issues.
Sting is currently showing nationwide in theaters courtesy of Well Go USA.
