It’s not been a good year of film for arachnophobes. We’ve had Adam Sandler engaging in philosophical debate with a giant talking spider in Netflix’s Spaceman, and we’ve recently had hordes of spiders swarming through a dilapidated housing complex in Paris in Shudder’s Infested. Now we have Sting, in which an extra-terrestrial eight-legs swells up to enormous proportions and causes chaos in a New York apartment block. Spiders; they’re the new sharks.
Charlotte (Alyla Browne) is a precocious 12-year-old living in a crumbling apartment building with her mother, Heather (Penelope Mitchell), and her stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr). One day, she discovers a tiny spider in a glowing object that has fallen to Earth nearby. She decides it’s the ideal pet – foolish girl, it’s clearly the worst – and she names it Sting after the lead singer/bass guitarist of her favourite 1980s faux reggae pop band (not really – she’s probably never even heard of Stewart Copeland). Inevitably, as it’s a spider from outer space, Sting starts to grow and despite Charlotte’s best efforts to keep the damned thing under wraps, it escapes and starts to rampage about the building, causing residents to disappear into ventilation shafts and quickly becoming spider-fodder. As the death toll mounts and the spider strikes closer to home, Charlotte discovers a weapon she can use against it – mothball juice (seriously) – and she sets out to find a way to track the thing down (it’s the size of a small car by now), save her family and destroy the monster. Bloody spiders.
Written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner, Sting is an unpretentious and unstuffy creature feature in the old-school style, favouring practical effects (the big beast is a proper working manipulated prop) over CGI, and it’s all the better (and creepier) for it. There are a number of genuinely flesh-crawling moments – many scenes of people covered in webs – and Alyla Browne rises to the challenge of becoming a junior Sarah Connor as she tools up to rid the world of another awful arachnid with ideas above its station. The final scene inevitably teases a sequel, which might be fun, but surely we’ve had enough (for now) of rampaging, chittering, slaughtering spiders who really should know their place and stay away from decent human beings. But for now, Sting is a win.
