Ninety-one minutes, including seven for closing credits, isn\u2019t enough for \u201cSting,\u201d a modestly scaled horror caper that pits a flesh-eating spider against a handful of Brooklynites. A little more would likely have gone a long way, given how rushed and underdeveloped many characters and animal attack scenes are in this polished genre exercise. Granted, a B-movie like this can only stand so much puffing up, but an extra 15-20 minutes probably wouldn\u2019t have hurt this Spielberg-y creature feature, which boasts creature effects by W\u0113t\u0101 Workshop (the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d trilogy). The makers of \u201cSting,\u201d led by writer\/director Kiah Roache-Turner (\u201cWyrmwood: Road of the Dead\u201d), have obviously seen a lot of genre movies, but that cinephilia doesn\u2019t translate into good cheap thrills or crowd-pleasing adventure drama.<\/p>\n
Like a lot of post-Amblin entertainments, \u201cSting\u201d focuses on a nuclear family\u2019s strained relationship whenever it\u2019s not a by-the-numbers When Animals Attack pic. Ethan (Ryan Corr) is a typical post-Spielberg dad: His fatal flaw is that he, uh, wears too many hats. He\u2019s the super for a Brooklyn apartment run by the cheap and questionably accented slum-lady Gunter (Robyn Nevin). Ethan\u2019s also a comic book artist with a rising career. <\/p>\n
For his comics, Ethan takes inspiration from angsty pre-teen Charlotte (Alyla Brown), the daughter of Heather (Penelope Mitchell), Ethan\u2019s exasperated partner. Ethan cares but is still insecure in his dual roles as provider and working stiff. Typically manageable problems add up fast, especially a mysterious pest issue in Gunter\u2019s building, as well as a growing rift between Ethan and Charlotte. No adults can help relieve Ethan\u2019s burden, not even Frank (Jermaine Fowler), an aggrieved, wisecracking exterminator. Enter Charlotte, the most sympathetic character in \u201cSting,\u201d possibly because she\u2019s the one who\u2019s most defined by dramatic\/situational peril. <\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to like Charlotte to care about scenes where she first raises and then chases after Sting, a pet spider who crash-lands to Earth in a ping-pong-ball-sized asteroid. Sting gets bigger over the course of the movie, but he never really adds much to \u201cSting\u201d beyond a generic threat. Charlotte could have been enamored with and then disgusted by an irradiated field mouse or a man-eating toilet \u2018gator. The fact that Sting\u2019s a spider doesn\u2019t really mean anything, which is strange given how much time Charlotte and the others spend getting around Gunter\u2019s building using an elaborate network of air vent tunnels. You might think that a story about an overtaxed dad and an underappreciated daughter might have more to say about spiderwebs and family life. You\u2019d be wrong, in this case. <\/p>\n
\u201cSting\u201d doesn\u2019t have much to say about Charlotte and Ethan\u2019s relationship beyond the conventional drive towards reconciliation. W\u0113t\u0101 makes Charlotte\u2019s spider look about as good as a giant black widow can, but even the creature\u2019s design feels like a missed opportunity here. It\u2019s just a black spider with a small red vertical dash down its back? Really? I mean, a well-rendered but generic threat isn\u2019t exactly monster movie Kryptonite. It\u2019s still only so interesting when the characters are also stock types, and the monster-centric scenes are too short and not even well-paced enough to be either suspenseful or gross. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ninety-one minutes, including seven for closing credits, isn\u2019t enough for \u201cSting,\u201d a modestly scaled horror caper that pits a flesh-eating spider against a handful of Brooklynites. A little more would likely have gone a long way, given how rushed and underdeveloped many characters and animal attack scenes are in this polished genre exercise. Granted, a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[48,37],"class_list":["post-1180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horror-movies","tag-horror","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}