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Describe This Movie In One Simpsons Quote:
JOHN: Well Homer, I won your respect. And all I had to do was save your life.
Brief Plot Synopsis: Alien arachnid assails apartment animal and anthropoids.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3 Feyd Rauthas out of 5.
Tagline: “Your biggest fear just got bigger.”
Better Tagline: “The spider man is having you for dinner tonight.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: In what has to be Brooklyn’s most rent controlled apartment building, young Charlotte (Alyla Browne) is coping with the fact her mom Heather (Penelope Mitchell) has not only remarried — Ethan (Ryan Corr), the building supervisor — but also has a new baby (Liam) with him. Fortunately (?) for her, she finds solace with a pet spider with the ability to mimic sounds and grow exponentially.
“Critical” Analysis: Yes, the girl’s name is “Charlotte.” Let’s move on.
As phobia-inducing creatures go, spiders don’t have quite as extensive a cinematic history as, say, sharks. Forced to opine on this disparity (and practically half of those are Godzilla movies with Kumonga), I’d say that in most cases you have to significantly increase a spider’s size to make them terrifying. On their own, sharks are already pretty scary, even if they’re far from the bloodthirsty maneaters Steven Spielberg told us they were.
The quality of spider vs. shark movies, on the other hand, is pretty commensurate. A couple of classics (Arachnophobia, Tarantula), lots of good-to-mediocre (Kingdom of the Spiders, Earth vs. the Spider, Eight Legged Freaks), and the usual parade of SyFy and anthology entries. The latest offering, Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting, may not reach the loftiest heights of the genre, but it’s a solid self-contained horror flick.
Sting opens with a sequence reminiscent of that old Monty Python skit about the hot woman luring milkmen into her house, only instead of a lingerie-clad Thelma Taylor (or Carol Cleveland in the movie) you’ve got Australian TV presenter Noni Hazelhurst as a mildly addled septuagenarian calling a succession of exterminators to deal with some odd noises in her walls.
Backing up a bit, we see these events started with an asteroid cluster passing close to Earth days earlier, one (very small) example of which finds itself into Charlotte’s apartment building. Charlotte, in the habit of using the surprisingly spacious ductwork to sneak around from apartment to apartment, finds the asteroid’s resident, whom she christens “Sting.” Presumably over confusion about actual spider anatomy.
You can guess what happens next (especially if you’ve seen the trailer): Charlotte feeds the cute little guy, who soon grows beyond the need for assistance finding sustenance. The big question is whether the building’s (remaining) humans realize what’s happening before it’s too late, because in a building with about 10 residents (including pets), absences are noticed pretty quickly.
That’s especially the case when the spider in question gives absolutely zero shits about who it eats. Your cat? Parrot? Baby? Just food waiting to be liquefied. Charlotte coasts on the beast’s goodwill for a short time, until its size and diminishing food supply force it’s hand, er, pedipalp. Sting’s ability to trivially escape from any enclosure is more reminiscent of an octopus than a spider, but the former isn’t quite as nightmarish, so here we are.
As Aliens ripoffs go, Sting is better than most. Our eight-legged xenomorph emerges from a goopy space egg and gets around through the building’s air ducts, while our heroic protagonist arms herself with makeshift weapons in order to get her baby brother back. Corr even gives it his best Lance Henriksen during the final throwdown. As I’ve said more than once in this gig, if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.
But it’s the parent angle that gets the most work. Will Ethan demonstrate is devotion to his stepdaughter and redeem himself in spite of a downward spiral of a career? Will this new family unit survive vituperation from Heather’s side of the family? And does anybody in this building still own mothballs?
Sting is in theaters today.
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Pete Vonder Haar
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