Review: Sting

Director:  Kiah Roache-Tuner

Stars:  Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Robyn Nevin

StudioCanal’s physical media arm may be having a bountiful year dropping 4K reissues of Francis Ford Coppola masterpieces (One from the Heart, The Conversation) but the distributor’s acquisitions for cinema have accumulated something of an Annus horribilis, from the disappointing likes of Baghead and Wicked Little Letters to barrel-scrapers Mothers’ Instinct and – ugh – Back to Black. In this context, sly Australian creature-feature Sting seems unlikely to reverse such fortunes, yet this modestly scaled horror offering is – at the very least – the best of this admittedly bad bunch (a description that probably does it a bit of a disservice). 

Fore-fronting Alyla Browne (young Furiosa herself) as plucky teenage comic book author Charlotte (natch), the entirety of Sting takes place within a South Brooklyn tenement building, meaning you’d be forgiven for missing that this was an Australian feature at all were it not for tells in the cast and some giveaway idents up front.

It’s the middle of winter. Snow drifts pile on the sidewalks, and a low-flying meteor sends alien arachnids showering down on New York’s unsuspecting populous. No bigger than a thumbnail, one such visitor becomes Charlotte’s pet, cooped up in a mason jar and kept secret from her mother Heather (Penelope Mitchell) and step-father Ethan (Ryan Corr).

While Ethan transposes Charlotte’s ideas into a successful comic book thanks to his nifty artistic skills, the family dynamic is fraught. Heather and Ethan’s newborn has attention divided, economic and geriatric concerns are causing cacophony on the sidelines, while the spectre of Charlotte’s MIA father hangs over all of them. Charlotte’s rapidly-growing pet soon comes to symbolise the stresses dwarfing family unity, lashing out at anyone and everyone caught in the peripheries. 

Writer/director/co-editor Kiah Roache-Turner is no newbie (best known to those with a fondness for Ozzie dystopia for the Wyrmwood series), and he attacks his own material with a nimble efficiency. Indeed, Sting feels visually reminiscent of Lee Cronin’s recent Evil Dead Rise, from it’s dark green, slimy colour-palette, to the smooth glides of the camera movements that make the tight hallways of the building feel both expansive and labyrinthine. 

Said efficiency frequently becomes his greatest asset, though some elements of the film feel inconsistent or under-nourished (Ethan seems intensely worried about money when matriarch Gunter (Robyn Nevin) threatens to fire him as the building supervisor, but hasn’t his new comic just been granted a 45,000 copy repress?), while there’s an entire incident with ‘twin’ exterminators the Bug Brothers which appears to have been excised from the final cut entirely. Elsewhere, Sting takes advantage of a number of movie conceits, particularly the ongoing insistence that all American ventilation systems are security-compromising networks with plenty of breathing room for full-sized adults (or oversized spiders…).

Where Roache-Turner differs defiantly from Cronin’s aforementioned Evil Dead picture is in his approach to family. Cronin turned family dysfunction into a Legion-like monster that needed to be purged to emancipate the individual. Roache-Turner uses the unit in more conventional terms; something ultimately stronger when united against a common foe – an ideal worth protecting at all costs. 

We’ve already had an itch-inducing spider feature this year in the form of Sébastien Vaniček politically-charged COVID allegory Infested. While everyone residing in the building here seems to make a living working from home – suggestive of a post-COVID climate of desirable isolationism – Sting manages to stand separate in a number of ways. Narratively less ambitious, featuring just the one creepy crawly, it’s more focused on (broader) character strokes. In spite of some alarming red flags suggestive of serious anger management issues, the heart of this piece is the faltering relationship between Ethan and Charlotte, and Sting is usually at its strongest when this is front and centre. Setting the story in the US and making it a close-encounter, Roache-Turner encourages connection to nostalgic Amblin Entertainment titles like *batteries not included and, of course, Arachnophobia. 

If there’s a wider invasion happening, it isn’t alluded to. Sassy exterminator Frank (Jermaine Fowler) never mentions a spike in call-outs. Perhaps that’s something Roache-Turner has back-pocketed for potential sequels (something the film’s ending coquettishly tees up). Horror likes it’s franchises so that’s entirely possible. For now, this is a nimble enough way to spend some time, spry enough to forgive occasional lapses in logic or the odd over-burdened sentimental moment. If it lacks in ingenuity or innovation, Sting sails by as a short, sharp shocker.

And if the trailers for the shark-infested Something in the Water are anything to go by, StudioCanal’s selections for 2024 might have just reached their peak…