A diminutive comet hurtles through the steel-gray New York City winter sky before crash landing in an apartment building (where it comes to rest in a dollhouse) where it promptly cracks open revealing it was an egg containing a small spider… a spider that is found by a young girl named Charlotte (Alyla Browne).
Charlotte takes her new pet home… to the apartment she shares with her mother, Heather (Penelope Mitchell), infant sibling, Liam, and building superintendent/comic book artist step-father Ethan (Ryan Corr)… and names her new friend Sting.
So, space-spider Sting is actually super smart as well, which would be fine and dandy if she didn’t apply that insidious intelligence to facilitate feeding on the dwelling’s residents (as well as any exterminator stupid enough to get in her way)… oh and she’s growing… and growing…
So much so, that things look rather dire for those that call the building home!
Coming from Writer/Director Kiah Roache-Turner (who brought us the wild post-apocalyptic Aussie zombie pics Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead and Wyrmwood: Apocalypse), Sting takes a slower-burn approach to the generally more off-the-wall giant spider-based creature features, and instead gives us a powerful character piece…
The aforementioned family have a strained relationship, and its presented credibly and with gravitas, and the actors on hand play their roles with believable conviction. The same can also be said for the folks playing the ensemble of apartment dwellers, each incredibly unique and interesting from Silvia Colloca as the alcoholic Maria, a woman that has lost it all to Danny Kim as the bizarre student Erik, to Robyn Nevin and Noni Hazlehurst as stern building owner/Charlotte’s aunt Gunter and her dementia suffering grandmother, Helga… not to mention prone-to-hysterics exterminator Frank played to perfection by Jermaine Fowler.
Now I hear you, “What about the creature of this feature?” Well, it’s a pretty damn solid combination of CG and puppetry and it’s a vicious customer to boot. And fear not, this film isn’t afraid to throw the gore around once Sting begins her rampage to grizzly, gooey effect!
To add to your enjoyment of the above, Well Go USA have included three brief but informative behind-the-scenes featurettes (concerning the film’s effects, Director and cast respectively) and the film’s trailer. I would have loved to hear more on how this production was put together via an audio commentary, but alas it was not meant to be my cats n’ creeps!
To put a beastly bow on it, Sting is a top-notch monster picture with quality effects and acting across the board… plus it evokes the vibe of mid-’80s apartment-based shockers put out by Charles Band’s Empire Pictures such as Troll and Crawlspace, and you know damn well that appeals to yours cruelly!
