Sting: Space Spiders Give Australian B-Movies an Upgrade

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B

Sting is the story of a girl and her pet spider. It's not the first girl-met-spider story, but I bet it's the first story where a girl meets an intergalactic spider.

However, not many studies have explored space spiders' habits, rituals, and patterns—not even ChatGPT has much to add to the conversation. The only space-spider expert we can turn to is Australian-based filmmaker Kia Roache-Turner, who wrote and directed Sting.

Before Sting, I gave little thought to the existence of space spiders. But if space spiders exist, who's to say they can't grow at an expediential rate and crave a three-course meal of crabby old lady with a side of creepy neighbour and, for dessert, a newborn?

Sound ridiculous? Of course, it does. Sting is ridiculous. Still, it's a better movie than it needs to be. A dramatic family backstory sets Sting apart from myriad other creature features.

Although appreciated, the extra effort Roache-Turner applies toward plot and character goes beyond the requirements for a creature feature to work. They had me on the promise of a giant space spider. Given an insatiably hungry creature with an appetite for humans and few good kills, I'm happy.

The film opens with a pebble-sized pod blazing across the sky like it were Kal-El (before becoming Clark Kent) escaping Krypton, entering Earth's atmosphere, puncturing a hole through the glass window of a Brooklyn tenement, and conveniently landing inside a doll house.

The pod, a sampling from the egg-shaped pods in Alien with the man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors, opens and out crawls the spider. The little arachnid scutters over the minuscule fixtures and furniture meticulously displayed in her aunt's treasured doll house, stopping to hover over the miniature baby's crib like a menacing eight-legged canopy. It's a disturbing bit of foreshadowing.

Outside the tenement, the fury of a New York City winter storm rages, pelting ice and snow against the building, rattling windows like a winter beast hell-bent on getting inside. But like the New Yorkers who live in them, Brooklyn tenements are hardy, resilient, and impenetrable.

For the moment, Charlotte (Alyla Browne), along with her mother (Penelope Mitchell), grandmother (Noni Hazlehurst), great Aunt Gunter (Robyn Nevin), baby brother, stepfather (Ryan Corr), and a handful of neighbours, are sheltered inside, safe, and warm.

And then along comes a spider.

Now they're just warm.

Charlotte clings to an idealized image of her birth father despite his abandoning the family, and she is having a tough time adjusting to life with a baby half-brother.

Trapped by the storm and with no companion remotely her age, Charlotte travels through the building via a tributary of air ducts (reminiscent of Tom Skerrit's death scene in Alien). The route provides glimpses into individual tenants' units, none offering much in the way of a distraction for a 12-year-old. So, when Charlotte discovers the adorable arachnid in Aunt Gunter's dollhouse, she believes she found an ally.

Charlotte names the spider Sting—I don't get the reference, but it has something to do with Lord of the Rings. Charlotte feeds and defends her pet, unaware she's nurturing an intergalactic killing machine. Eventually, Sting outgrows its taste for cockroaches, developing a taste for family pets before discovering the ultimate delicacy: tenants woven in a silk cocoon.

It's Charlotte's grandmother who sounds the first alarm. She calls Frank (Jermaine Fowler) a streetwise exterminator, dragging him from the comfort of his home to brave the winter elements. Frank provides some of the film's comic relief. Erik (Danny Kim), the building's resident entomologist, is played less for laughs—a nerdy loner Charlotte is cautioned to stay away from.

However, the relationship that has the most underlying tension is between Charlotte and her stepfather, Ethan. Charlotte aspires to write comic books. Ethan is a promising graphic artist who works into the wee morning hours doing what he can to help his stepdaughter along.

Theirs would be the ideal partnership were it not for Charlotte's delusions about her birth father and were Ethan not burdened with a day job maintaining the apartment building owned by his wife's irritable and petty Aunt Gunter.

By naming the protagonist Charlotte, director Roache-Turner reveals an affection for E.B. White's classic children's story, Charlotte's Web. But comparisons stop at the name. In E.B. White's book, Charlotte is the spider, not the girl. And even though E.B. White's spider could write messages with its web, there is no indication that Charlotte, the spider, came from outer space.

We can be thankful that Roache-Turner resists joining the recent trend of revisioning characters from children's stories as horror villains. I fear the time might come when Charlotte's Web joins the ranks of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, The Legend of Jack and Jill, The Gingerbread Man, and the upcoming Willy Wonka and Pinocchio projects. But when it comes, it won't come from Roache-Turner.

Sting is Roache-Turner's first film set outside his native Australia. But even in a New York location, it can't wholly disguise its Australian roots.

Roache-Turner infuses the film with B-movie sensibilities—a skill Australian filmmakers have mastered. Genre films that should be easy to dismiss—Babadook, Eden Lake, The Loved Ones, Rogue, and now Sting—turn out to be better than anticipated.

The B-movie has officially gone the way of the double feature. But people have yet to tell Australia. I'm hoping no one ever does.

Sting. Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner. Starring Ryan Corr, Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Robyn Nevin, Noni Hazelhurst, Silvia Colloca, Danny Kim, and Jermaine Fowler. In theatres now.