Movie Review – Sting (2024)

May 30, 2024

3–4 minutes

Available digitally right now and landing on Blu-ray & DVD on the 30th of July, STING is a horror movie written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner which sees youngster Charlotte (Alyla Browne) and her family fighting for their lives after her pet “spider” transforms into a giant flesh-eating monstrosity. It’s a well-polished affair, particularly the visual effects which come courtesy of the Academy Award-winning Weta Workshop, and those with a phobia of eight-legged creatures will be in absolute hell.

The story is, as you might expect, a fairly straightforward one, as a mysterious snooker ball-sized meteorite crashes into the apartment complex where Charlotte, her mother (Penelope Mitchell), stepdad (Ryan Corr) and newborn half-brother brother all live. Out of this tiny rock crawls what initially appears to be spider, but rapidly turns out to be something else entirely. Somewhat unwisely, Charlotte squirrels her new “pet” away and starts raising it on her own, chronicling its worrying habits – such as the ability to mimic the sounds of its prey – with hair-pulling naivety.

Things rapidly escalate in fairly predictable fashion as the spider becomes more and more aggressive while growing at an unnaturally exponential rate, before finally escaping and starting to slowly pick off the inhabitants of the Brownstone (and their pets!) one at a time.

STING doesn’t do anything particularly new, but what it does, it does fairly well. Unfortunately, it struggles with the limitations of its running time, introducing a plethora of underdeveloped characters whose inevitable deaths, while visually pleasing, don’t carry any sort of narrative weight. The sub-plot of the fractured family unit, with Charlotte trying to find her place in the pecking order following the birth of her little brother and stepdad Ethan struggling to keep it all together, is a little flimsy, but at least provides some context and focus for the non-horror scenes. Once again, the lack of development for anyone outside of Charlotte and (at a stretch) Ethan hurts the overall level of investment, and robs the ultimate resolution and realisation of any real emotional heft.

Exterminator Frank (Jermaine Fowler) seems designed to inject a little humour into the proceedings, but a lot of his lines fall a little flat, and his inclusion only serves to highlight the tonal inconsistency of the movie. Over the course of the 91 minute running time, we go from a horror comedy opening with amnesiac grandmother Helga (Noni Hazlehurst) inviting a string of pest control agents to her apartment to be chewed up by the source of the “strange noises in her wall”, to a straight-faced middle section, then back to a faintly comedic and action-heavy finale. As such, it’s a tricky movie to get a handle on, and it’s tough to identify whether the more cliched sections are done with tongue planted firmly cheek or are just, y’know, cliched.

That said, the final 25 minutes are an absolute blast as the seemingly full-grown “Sting” lays siege to the entire family, and features several neat nods to classic action and horror movies amidst the rapidly spiraling carnage. The team at Weta Workshop really shine during these moments, and while we don’t ever really get a clean shot at the eight-legged antagonist, the horror and tension is undeniably well delivered.

Overall then, while the delivery definitely feels a little dated in places, there are certainly more than enough shocks and and skin-crawling moments to make STING an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half. And you have to imagine that’s exactly what Roache-Turner was going for.