Sting is a fun little creature feature that follows young Charlotte adopting a spider she finds in a dollhouse. She terrifyingly realizes that this spider is more dangerous than anything she could’ve ever expected.
I have a fun little relationship with spider movies. One of my earliest movie memories is doing a double feature of Arachnophobia and Kingdom of the Spiders. I was way too young to have seen those and I was terrified for years of spiders, yet was always so curious about them when I saw them out in nature. I don’t typically seek out spider-based horror movies because they bring back that same fear I had back then, but nevertheless, I was very interested in this movie.
I came in with low expectations and they were honestly met. There really isn’t much to latch onto with this one outside of a few things. The characters are very one-dimensional. Charlotte is angsty and not much else. She doesn’t quite bond with her new, overworked stepfather but even without finishing the movie, you know they’re going to have their reconciliation moment by the end. The side characters have their one trait that doesn’t change until their death or the end of the movie. Coming into a movie like this expecting compelling characters is just foolish.
Sting, the name Charlotte gives to this spider, is very interesting. We see her land in a meteorite at the start of the movie to grow into a dog-sized monster. She is highly intelligent, mimicking sounds she hears to communicate with Charlotte or to trick her next victim. In terms of movie monsters, I have no complaints.
One thing I truly enjoyed was how much effort went into defining the apartment our victims and survivors were going to be trapped. The opening credits are shown with Sting moving around a dollhouse version of the apartment building. In her first scene, we see Charlotte move around the building through the air vents, looking into everyone’s apartment. Even though they reuse shots of her moving in the vents, it went a long way to map out the place where we were going to spend this entire movie.
The kills and effects were pretty gnarly as well. Sting is a menace who kills her victims from the inside out. The movie gets bloody and having a spider monster is already enough to get people creeped out. I wish the movie didn’t take its time with all the setups to attacks, but in a movie that’s 91 minutes long, I get they needed every second they could get.
Her design is modeled after a black widow spider, which is for sure cool, if not the most creative looking. What is cool is that most of her effects were done practically, thanks to WETA Workshops. I always appreciate practical effects when possible so this gets a big bump up in my opinion.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Sting is an interesting creature feature with a good monster that plays into one of the most common phobias ever. While there are not a lot of characters to get invested in, the movie makes the most of its location and tries to emulate movies like Aliens for its end and I’ll always respect that.
