STING – Movie Review

Sting is now playing in theaters.

The lesson for ‘Sting,’ a new creature-feature horror flick hitting theaters this weekend, is relatively simple: keeping a large foreign spider as a pet will likely have devastating consequences. Who would have thought? Kiah Roache-Turner directs the film. ‘Sting’ is a thrilling ride. It centers on 12-year-old Charlotte, whose pet spider rapidly grows and transforms into a monster, posing a menacing threat to her family and neighbors.

One of the intriguing aspects of ‘Sting’ is its focus on the mysterious arachnid’s backstory. The menacing spider at the heart of the film arrives at Charlotte’s home through a pod that flies through the attic window. Is it an alien? Has a science experiment gone wrong? The movie leaves these questions open, catering to the curiosity of horror audiences who are eager to witness some gruesome eight-legged kills, a promise that ‘Sting’ fulfills.

The bad thing is audiences have to wade through a bit of familial backstory before they get to the fun. In the film’s 90-minute runtime, the horrors kick in until the last third of the movie. Once the fun starts, it’s mostly well done. Practical webbing and puppeteered spiders make for some amusingly gory sequences. However, there is nothing horror fans haven’t experienced before in some form or another. The light tone and moments of spider carnage are enough to make you look past the wooden performances and strangely convenient solutions to the spider problem.

VERDICT

I give ‘Sting’ 3 out of 5 stars. It is not for arachnophobes, and horror fans might find it a little lacking in the consistency of scares and gore. There’s definitely some fun to have with ‘Sting,’ but it’s almost too little too late in the short runtime before it starts spinning its webs.

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