Kiah Roache-Turner
In cinemas (US); Releasing 31 May (UK)
A bratty 12-year-old girl. A feckless stepfather who loses her trust and feels increasingly out of place in his own home. Oh, and a giant spider. Kiah Roache-Turner, a newish director of horror, understands that real originality has almost nothing to do with who and what you put in front of the screen. What matters is how you set those elements dancing.
Like 2023鈥檚 killer-doll hit M3gan, with which it shares a certain antic humour, Sting cares about its characters. Charlotte (Alyla Browne) hero-worships her absent father, and this is slowly driving stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr) up the wall, since he knows her real dad lives only half an hour away 鈥渁cross the bridge鈥�. Brooklyn Bridge, New York, that is, where Sting is set. The film was, in fact, shot in Sydney, and takes place in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn, all drywall and ducts.
Advertisement
Ethan is a struggling comic book artist who ends up borrowing (and spoiling) Charlotte鈥檚 own much livelier ideas. When Charlotte鈥檚 pet spider (it arrived on a meteor during an ice storm 鈥� never a good sign) grows to man-eating size and drags Ethan off through an air duct, Charlotte, plugged into her earphones, her video games and her anger, simply fails to notice.
The scene tries to hit the sweet spot between horror and comedy that M3gan struck again and again. If it doesn鈥檛 quite succeed, it may have less to do with the writing or direction than with the film鈥檚 premise, which is, when you come down to it, very thin.
Comparisons with the original Alien are inevitable, if only because of the spider鈥檚 breakneck growth rate and all those ducts. And as far as the special effects go, Sting the Spider stands up well. Wisely, the film prefers glimpses, shadows and very well-judged sight gags to full-on goo and muppeteering.
The apartment (a realistically over-stuffed gothic interior full of corners and cabinets) is the family in metaphor. Ducts connecting Charlotte鈥檚 bedroom to the sitting room of her grandmother Helga (Noni Hazlehurst, having more fun than the rest of the cast put together) are the torturous lines of communication by which these good folk struggle to maintain a sense of connection.
The film favours suspense over surprise. We learn early on that Charlotte鈥檚 pet can鈥檛 bear the smell of mothballs and that Helga, wrapped in threadbare shawls, stinks of them. For a second, we teeter on the brink of a fairytale in which an old woman and a young girl save the 鈥渞eal鈥� adult world.
Nothing kills a good story faster than cleverness, but a few more touches of that sort wouldn鈥檛 have hurt. Instead we have an efficient, entertaining, light-hearted script, very ably realised, and one and a half hours of light entertainment that, though not at all wasted, aren鈥檛 filled to the brim, either.
New Scientist book club
Love reading? Come and join our friendly group of fellow book lovers. Every six weeks, we delve into an exciting new title, with members given free access to extracts from our books, articles from our authors and video interviews.
Why, then, has Sting acquired global distribution and, before its release, such glowing trade coverage? Well, for one thing, it is refreshing to see a movie that puts its characters through the wringer in psychologically believable ways. Charlotte saves Ethan. Ethan saves Charlotte. In the face of a fate worse than death (trust me here), the two learn to cooperate. A weak man gains strength, a lonely child learns that there is value in other people, a cowardly exterminator loses his head and a bitter landlady plummets down a lift shaft. What鈥檚 not to like?
Storytelling this pure looks effortless, but if it were, films in general would be a lot better than they are.
Simon also recommends鈥�
John Wyndham
Published 10 years after his death, Wyndham鈥檚 sly last novel takes a utopian colony to an uninhabited Pacific island that turns out to be irradiated and infested with tiny, talented spiders.
Henry Selick
Laika
This utterly traumatising animation shows how far into the weird you can go armed with a talking cat and a box of buttons.
Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer. Follow him on Instagram at @simon_ings
