Summary
Sting has potential as a creature feature, but its unnecessary family drama and unlikeable characters torpedo it.
Plot: A twelve-year-old girl (Alyla Browne) finds and cares for an alien spider with a ferocious carnivorous appetite.
Review: Creature features have had a long and storied history in the world of film. Whether we’re talking about an oversized kaiju stomping through Tokyo, a giant shark killing swimmers, or even a horde of killer rabbits, I’m sure everyone’s top 100 movie list includes at least one of a monstrous non-human stalking humans. One of my favourites in this regard is Arachnophobia – having a mild case of fear of spiders, it resonated with me. When I saw the trailer for Sting, it looked right up my alley, and I hoped it would be a wildly good time.
Well…it wasn’t. It has its moments, but Sting is ultimately let down by its story and characters. It’s not a hard formula to make a great creature feature – amusing characters, creepy moments, some good kills – you don’t have to write Citizen Kane to make a successful film from this genre. Gremlins isn’t Shakespeare, nor should it be.
Someone forgot to tell the filmmakers of this because, at times, I felt like I was watching a family drama. Worse, it was a family drama where I hated almost the entire family. Take Charlotte, the main character (Charlotte’s keeping a spider as a pet – get it? Charlotte’s Web!). She’s fucking annoying. Not just annoying. Fucking annoying. Irritating. She whines at her stepfather, whines about her baby brother, whines, complains, bitches, and then…whines some more. Her mother is just as bad and runs down her husband, who wants to be a comic book artist but is in a dead-end job supervised by his wife’s miserly, irritating aunt. The tenant above is a robotic psychopath. There’s almost no one to like other than the stepdad, and for some reason, the exterminator is the best character, hands down – he’s hilarious.
Amidst all the bloody good antics from the giant spider who goes on a killing spree is this poorly-written family drama, mostly about how inadequate the stepdad is and how he’s going to leave his miserable family – personally, I would have been out the door within five minutes. It drags down the sometimes terrific gore and chills that the spider provides.
While you don’t see any really good kills (another minus), the damn thing just creeping through the building vents, looking for its next victim, was enough to make my skin crawl. A few pets and a few humans end up being spider chow – though not enough, in my opinion. For me, the ending was unsatisfying, if not unpredictable. It’s undeserved, and I would have preferred if the movie had been more self-aware about the crappy characters it presented us with.
What a good creature feature needs is a great score, and here, again, Sting gives us nothing to work with. I couldn’t hum the score if you put a gun to my head. It’s a shame because I see potential – the spider is creepy, has a great design, and there are some good gore effects, so it wasn’t like a good movie wasn’t there. Frank, the exterminator, was entertaining and one of the only characters I cheered for, so they knew how to write a good character. The stepdad isn’t half-bad, either. They put it all in one location, which was smart. The components were there; they just decided to try and jam a separate movie in there that didn’t fit, and that’s ultimately why the film is ho-hum at best.