Watching the new indie arachnophobic horror film Sting instantly whisked me back to the mid 1980s, huddled in front of my mom’s Zenith System 3 Space Command TV. The reception was spotty at best, but it was on that family cathode-ray tube — the original CRT — that I first indulged in the guilty pleasures of creature features like Steve McQueen’s leading-role debut in The Blob, the 1977 TV movie Ants!, and the sexed-up Swamp Thing (still can’t believe I got away with that one).
Those B flicks followed a simple formula: a straightforward plot, uncomplicated characters, and monsters tailored to tap into the audience’s primal fears. They weren’t designed to haunt you long after you left the theater or to deliver philosophical profundity but rather to induce a good shiver and, above all, ensure you had a good time. By and large, Sting adheres to this tried-and-true recipe, enhanced with the perfect serving of camp and just enough gore to secure its “R” rating.
Outside of a few snowy establishing shots, the Aussie-made film unfolds entirely within the walls of a Brooklyn apartment building that has seen better days. Here, the twelve-year-old Charlotte (Alyla Browne) lives with her mom, Heather (Penelope Mitchell), and step-father, Ethan (Ryan Corr), who doubles as the building supervisor. Though the film employs the somewhat unnecessary trope of a young girl with a complicated relationship with her parents, Sting’s setup is lean and effective.
One night, a nickel-sized meteor crashes through the girl’s bedroom window, carrying an extraterrestrial surprise — an egg that soon hatches into a spider. The aptly named Charlotte decides, unbeknownst to her family, to make the eight-legged visitor her new roommate, housing it in a glass jar as a pet. In a nod to Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors, the spider starts doubling in size after every feeding. Of course, the situation quickly spirals out of control, and the spider begins terrorizing the building’s zany cast of tenants, which include a flirtatious drunk and her chihuahua.
Despite weaving a familiar web, Sting successfully keeps audiences engaged with its blend of clever shadow play, jump scares, and campy humor. Many of the laughs come from actor-comedian Jermaine Fowler, who plays the pest-control agent summoned to the rundown building.
Much of the movie’s success can be attributed to director Kiah Roache-Turner’s firm grasp of the genre’s cinematic grammar and his clarity about its intent. Sting features a few gruesome scenes, but it doesn’t pander to gluttons for gore — Roache-Turner knows what kind of movie he’s making. But in case there were any doubts as to its light-hearted tone, he even integrates flashes of drive-in horror classics and vintage 1950s refrigerators into the set design.
Staying true to the entertainment-first ethos of the B movies it clearly admires, Sting also largely side-steps social commentary, with one notable exception: During its most tense sequence, the film jabs at Gen Z’s obsession with social media, showing Charlotte so engrossed in it that she’s oblivious to the horrors unfolding around her.
Sting’s most spine-tingling moments are elevated by its technical prowess, with Roache-Turner’s minimization of CGI paying off handsomely. The film’s practical effects — featuring gnarly spiders expertly crafted by Richard Taylor, the Oscar-winning visual-effects guru behind Lord of the Rings — are well worth the price of admission. This is especially true in the movie’s playfully macabre climax, which pays homage to sci-fi stalwarts like Aliens and The Terminator.
Will Sting ever reach the cult status of the late-night classics I tuned into on TBS and Nick at Nite as a kid? It’s hard to say, but it certainly works as a fun Friday popcorn movie — and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
