STING: 3 ½ STARS. “works best when it allows the two-legged stars to shine.”
“Sting,” a new creature feature from director Kiah “Nekrotronic” Roache-Turner, is about a young girl named Charlotte and a spider, but “Charlotte’s Web” this ain’t.
Alyla Browne is precocious 12-year-old Charlotte. Ignored by her parents, saddled with an annoying baby brother and a cruel aunt, she escapes the tedium of everyday life by shimmying through the duct work of her Brooklyn apartment complex.
Her exploration of the creaky old building brings her to a locked room, where she finds a tiny spider living in a dollhouse. As she adopts the creature, names him Sting but what she doesn’t know is that the arachnid is no ordinary spider. Brought to earth inside a meteor fragment, the eight-legged alien grows rapidly, spinning a web of terror as it preys on the residents of Charlotte’s apartment building.
“I always say, ‘Never make friends with anything with more than four legs,’” says exterminator Frank (Jermaine Fowler). “A spider only knows two things, that’s eat and kill.”
As Sting wreaks havoc on her neighbors, Charlotte takes it upon herself, with some unlikely help, to squash the bug.
Arachnophobes beware! “Sting” contains enough eight-legged horror to make your skin crawl. Much of the action happens in the shadows, but the spider attacks are graphic and have an “Alien” vibe. A spider crawling into a person’s mouth will never not be terrifying.
The focus on pure horror is blurred somewhat by the introduction of characters like Erik (Danny Kim), the monotone, awkward guy Charlotte turns to for help, who dilute the story, distracting from the horror and Charlotte’s fractured family.
The family dynamics provide the film’s anchor, supplying the high stakes that keep the audience invested in the action. The oddball characters are fun, but it is the emotion of Charlotte’s reclaimed relationship with her family, forged in the fire of a full-blown spider attack, that gives the movie its heart.
“Sting” has a few laughs and some spidery scares, but it works best when it allows the two-legged stars to shine.
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