Panic Fest 2024: Sting

With a perfect blend of humor, heart, and horror, “Sting” is a rousing good time that honors the glory days of entertaining creature features.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a great, skin-crawling, nightmare-inducing spider movie — at least one worth talking about. Memorable films like 2013’s Big Ass Spider! And 2002’s Eight Legged Freaks were wonderfully fun but light on actual horror.

Killer spiders, often oversized to amplify the threatening dread, have made many memorable appearances in films — from The Mist to Starship Troopers, Kong: Skull Island to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. It’s not hard to understand why.

Arachnophobia, the irrational fear of spiders, is one of the most common specific phobias. According to a 1991 study, about 75% of people are either mildly or severely afraid of spiders.

Despite how ripe for terrorizing audiences spiders are, Frank Marshall’s 1990 film Arachnophobia may be the last time a movie centered around deadly arachnids was so damn terrifying and squirm-in-your-seat uncomfortable.

Perhaps the scariest spider movie ever made, this film’s prehistoric predators (which utilized real spiders) were chilling, and the threat felt unnervingly real.

However, in between hiding your face in your hands and nearly hyperventilating, Arachnophobia was also damn funny and wildly entertaining with great performances, and that’s the kind of energy Sting attempts (rather successfully) to channel.

In fact, this highly anticipated arachnid horror film written and directed by indie sensation Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, Nekrotronic) feels like a bit of a horror throwback — in the best possible way.

With believable characters, a well-written script, and stellar effects, it’s a return to the beloved creature feature that nails that delicate balancing act between heart, humor, and spine-tingling frights.

It begins with a bang that lets you know you’re in for something special while introducing us to our titular spider’s brief out-of-this-world origin story.

Before that, though, we get a delightful prologue featuring two of the standouts from the supporting cast and the heavy lifters when it comes to comic relief: Helga, a senile grandmother (Noni Hazlehurst), and Frank (The Blackening’s Jermaine Fowler), a beleaguered exterminator.

The intro makes it clear that Roache-Turner plans to lean into the levity, but that certainly doesn’t mean that Sting lacks any bite.

Traveling back in time a few days from the events of the prologue, we meet a precocious pre-teen named Charlotte (a spectacular Ayla Browne). Lonely and stressed by her living situation, including a stepdad she butts heads with and a new baby in the house, Charlotte is thrilled to find an intriguing-looking spider in her great-Aunt Gunter’s (Robyn Nevin) dollhouse.

She decides to keep him secretly in a jar in her room, quickly developing an affection for the unnervingly smart and ravenously hungry creature she names Sting.

Though Sting looks like an average arachnid when Charlotte first adopts him, his advanced behavior, including his ability to mimic sounds and his rapid growth, quickly makes it clear this is no normal spider. In fact, as Charlotte’s quirky neighbor, an entomophile named Erik (Danny Kim) warns, Sting may not be a spider at all — at least not one of this Earth.

It’s not hard to imagine where this is going as the Sting rapidly evolves from a household pet to an unstoppable threat. Before long, nothing and no one in Charlotte’s rundown New York City apartment building will be safe.

Leading up to the inevitable gooey, gory eight-legged freakshow you showed up for, Roache-Turner weaves a compelling tale of familial drama.

The focus is primarily on Charlotte’s loving but somewhat strained relationship with her stepdad, Ethan (Ryan Corr—Wolf Creek 2, House of the Dragon).

Before you roll your eyes, rest assured that the time taken to flesh out the film’s characters and develop some stakes you actually care about pays off dividends when Sting’s intense and thrilling finale rolls around.

It helps that the actors each bring their A-game, and the heavier dramatic moments are well-balanced with a mostly nutty and incredibly fun-to-watch supporting cast of fellow tenants.

We also have Sting running amok in the background, working his way through other pets in the building, eventually graduating to much larger human prey. While we only see the gruesome aftermath of some kills, others are shown in all their horrifying, jaw-dropping glory — including one kill that’ll have audiences gasping.

The tension and terror escalate rapidly as Sting’s spree of carnage inches closer and closer to the characters we’ve grown quite attached to.

Eventually, Charlotte and her family realize an apex predator is hunting them, and it’s up to brave, industrious Charlotte to channel her best Ellen Ripley and save them from certain doom.

Heartfelt and endearing, with equal parts whimsy and dread, STING feels like a sincere love letter to monster movies of the 80s and a legitimately worthwhile successor to ARACHNOPHOBIA.

The giant spider itself looks fantastic, thanks to the team at the world-famous Wētā Workshop, the New Zealand special effects juggernaut responsible for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as Hellboy, King Kong, and The Hobbit.

Crafted as the first-ever entirely 3D-printed puppet, Sting is a realistically imposing and nightmare-inducing visual treat.

Will it scare you? Absolutely, especially if spiders naturally give you the heebie-jeebies. But it’s not so terrifying that it can’t be enjoyed by just about everyone, and Roache-Turner expertly paces the film to keep things moving quickly while allowing the audience time to breathe, smile, and chuckle in between more intense scenes.

It’s a real crowd-pleaser that deserves to be seen on the big screen with a game audience.

Sharing the ample thrills provided by Sting with a room full of collective gasps, giggles, screams, and cheers will undoubtedly make this exceedingly good time even more memorable.