‘Sting’ Review — A Creepy Spider Horror Movie Gets Caught in Its Own Web

The Big Picture

• Sting
  fails to fully embrace the potential of a murderous spider, getting bogged down in a poorly written family drama.
• The film sporadically succeeds in capturing the absurdity of a killer spider, but is weighed down by excessive padding.
• The design of the spider creature is a standout, but the film’s climax comes too late and emotional aspects fall short of being engaging.

In the opening moments of writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting, a creature feature that never makes the most of its premise, we get a glimpse of what could have been a joyous horror movie. Various exterminators are called to an apartment complex in New York City, where they are picked off one after another by a giant spider. Frank (Jermaine Fowler) is the first death that we really see, with the actor screaming and shouting with all the necessary gusto to make it fun as he gets dragged away. But the film doesn’t sit with this for much longer, as we then almost immediately flash back to trace the path of how it is that we got here. In addition to being an immediately disappointing shift in focus, Sting spends nearly its entire runtime trying to get back to the promise with which it began.

Instead of fully embracing the ridiculous potential of a murderous spider that takes over an apartment, the film becomes tangled up in a poorly written and acted family drama that gets in the way of the fun bits. Even as it picks up in the end, the journey to get there drags it down. While it could tickle the fancy of those looking for a horror movie built around the common fear, Arachnophobia this is not. Where that managed to make the arachnid into what was essentially a slasher villain, capturing things from their perspective in abundantly absurd fashion while still bringing plenty of serious attention to the craft itself, Sting is only sporadically successful at doing this. There are a few high highs scattered throughout the film, but there are just as many low lows where you’re left wondering why we’re spending so much time building up to the best parts that we already saw in the beginning.

What Is ‘Sting’ About?

This begins with a wonderfully ridiculous opening scene where we see something from space coming hurtling toward Earth. It then proceeds to crash through the window of the apartment complex that is surrounded by snow where we will spend the majority of the film. That’s right, this spider is from an unknown place in the vast galaxy and is soon about to upend the lives of the already troubled family that now unknowingly has it as a roommate. Charlotte (Alyla Browne) is the young kid who becomes the film’s protagonist and initially keeps this spider in a jar. She feeds it other bugs and is fascinated by how her new pet dispatches them before gulping them down. However, this only gives it more strength and leads to it seeking out bigger prey in the nearby apartments. Her mother Heather (Penelope Mitchell) and her stepfather Ethan (Ryan Corr) are initially oblivious to this, because of course, as they mostly bicker over adult things while also caring for a newborn. There are other quirky characters here and there, though they mostly exist to get picked off while the family drama plays out right next door. In this excess noise, Sting never finds enough strength to leave much of a mark.

There are bursts of bloody brutality, including a kill that takes someone apart from the inside out, which is a real highlight, that provide enough of a jolt to almost make you think there is something more substantively silly to chew on here. Almost, but not quite. Instead, just when it starts seeming like it is going to let loose, it settles back into the family dynamics that feel like padding more than they do anything else. There is one moment where Ethan says something so cruel near the end that it is almost comical, as the moment isn’t earned. You’re just wondering where the hell that came from and why he decided to lash out at a child who, while rebellious in cliché movie fashion, we are meant to believe he also cares about.

The subsequent banding together aspect of the movie as they must do battle with the spider in the film’s climax doesn’t work either. Sting is pushing hard for something more emotional to hang itself on, but this is just never as interesting as it seems to think it is. Instead, you’re just wishing all of that would step aside, and we’d get a horror film more from the perspective of the killer rather than the stock characters it’s setting out to consume. There are moments where it manages to shed all the excess nonsense and get right down to these strengths, though they’re too siloed off in the film to hold much weight in the overall experience.

The Spider in ‘Sting’ Is Still Something Special

All of this proves to be a shame as the design of the spider creature itself is often quite fun. There was clearly a lot of thought put into how it would move around and what it could do. Such moments represent the film at its most creative. Just seeing it dangle over its next victims or crawl towards them is proper fun. It’s the type of thing that, had it been made the heart of the experience, would have ensured it was all really cooking.

The entire last part of the movie is especially joyous, with Charlotte taking the fight to the spider à la John McClane in Die Hard, though it still comes as too little too late. Hanging over all of it is the sense that it should have launched into this much earlier and with more gusto. Instead, it teases us with where it is all going and then, like far too many movies do, flashes back to drag along until we finally make it back there. Rather than creating suspense, it just makes the whole thing into far more of a slog than a genuine horror romp. In the end, the whole film just can’t get itself completely unstuck from this web of its own making.

Sting comes to theaters in the U.S. starting April 12. Click below for showtimes near you.

GET TICKETS