Movie Review: STING (2024), Watkinsville Vending 8/17, New Author
HARRIET THE SPY meets ARACHNOPHOBIA with a helping of LABYRINTH's blended-family drama. Also selling in Watkinsville this coming Saturday and a new author you might like.
Another movie that I should have seen in theaters but came and went before I could bestir myself (check out my review of Kristen Stewart’s deep-sea creature feature Underwater for a previous example) is the 2024 Australian film Sting. Instead I “rented” it off Amazon (the fact I had a good-sized gift-card balance helped) and used it as gym Kindle fodder. I enjoyed it, so now I’m sharing it with all of you.
The Plot
A meteor crash-lands in a rundown New York City apartment complex one dreary winter, bringing with it what appears to be a black widow spider. Said spider is found by the airduct-crawling Charlotte (Alyla Browne), a 12-year-old girl whose life has been turned upside down by her mother Heather (Penelope Mitchell)’s new marriage to Ethan (Ryan Corr) and the arrival of baby half-brother Liam (Jett Berry). The bug-obsessed Charlotte, who is working on a comic book with her stepfather, keeps the creature, which she names Sting, in a jar and feeds it roaches their complex’s obnoxious owner does a bad job keeping under control.
As you may expect from a monster movie, what was once a little bug becomes a very big problem.
The Good
*The movie starts out with a very intense scene in which Charlotte’s grandmother, who is clearly suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s, calls an exterminator about something moving around in the walls. That scene alone kept my attention the whole time, and the filmmakers are clearly following the Jaws principle of there’s nothing scarier than something one cannot see.
*Charlotte is an interesting character in her own right — (most of the time) more sympathetic than Labyrinth’s Sarah Williams despite having a similar family situation. She combines hormonal stereotypical middle-school dramatics with a strong interest in bugs and exploring via airduct, which is pretty interesting. And her familial situation is introduced smoothly and without info-dumps. For example, the comic she and Ethan are working on features their names on the front cover and the fact they have different surnames makes it clear he’s her stepfather, as does the fact she often refers to him by his first name rather than “Dad.” Their relationship has a good arc. And the casting for both her and her mother is good — they look a great deal alike.
*Frank (Jermaine Fowler), a very zealous exterminator, is also pretty cool. He’s got a lot of amusing lines and is very entertaining whenever he’s onscreen. I also liked Erik (Danny Kim), an oddball biology student conducting medical experiments in his apartment.
*One scene is a nice bit of commentary about the things you can miss when you’re wearing headphones.
*The last part of the film turns into a tween version of Die Hard, which is pretty creative. Charlotte knows her rogue pet’s weaknesses and how to exploit them.
*The film pulls off some creativity with the chronology. Time-jumping doesn’t work a lot of the time (heh), but this actually worked.
The Bad
*Frank is the first person other than Charlotte to find out about Sting and he recognizes Sting is abnormal and dangerous. Why didn’t he mention the situation to Ethan, especially since he has the perfect opportunity early on? Or if he knows that Ethan isn’t Charlotte’s biological father (he seems to know at least some members of their extended family), to Heather? A lot of horror movies have problems with characters making bad decisions and this is one of them.
(It wouldn’t even change the course of the story much.)
*At one point in the film Heather makes an ugly accusation against Ethan when we’d had no hint at all they were having friction. It kind of came out of nowhere, as does another disagreement they have later. Earlier in the movie it seemed like everything was fine between them, and she particularly appreciated his stepping up as Charlotte’s stepfather. And what triggers the second, worse confrontation is explainable by something one would think Ethan would have told her earlier. Poor Communication Kills. If Heather’s hurtful and out-of-nowhere 180 toward Ethan is the result of baggage from her failed relationship with Charlotte’s father, particularly if he were negligent or abusive, this could have been built up more.
*They could have done more with Erik, especially since some of the movie promotional material makes it sound like the various eccentric residents band together to fight Sting. He’s probably the weirdest person living in the complex and he is an expert in biology, so he could have played a larger role in the story.
*Sting is supposed to be an alien, but it (she?) doesn’t really have an original design. I was expecting something rather more alien.
*There’s a dumb line that rips off Predator toward the end.
The Verdict
Good, but could be better. Worth seeing once. 8.0 out of 10.
Vending at a Convention in Watkinsville on 8/17
From 10 AM to 6 PM I’ll be signing and selling at Fan Fest 2024, a small convention sponsored by the Oconee County public library system in Watkinsville, Georgia. The event will take place at the Oconee County Civic Center on Hog Mountain Road. More details here.
Last time I was there they had a lot of interesting stuff, including live musical, martial arts demonstrations, cosplay, food trucks, and gaming. One of my friends from the Methodist ministry I was involved with in college even came out with his kids. If you’re in the area, definitely check out.
Another Newsletter and Writer To Check Out
Back in early July, British author Tom Norford promoted my $0.99 promotion for Battle and “SOG” on his own Substack newsletter. At some point I’m going to promote his work more formally — he’s got another book coming out soon — but here’s the book he’s got out now, The Starved God.
It’s on Kindle Unlimited, so I’ll give it a look at some point. It reminds me of the science fiction novel Metaplanetary I read when I was in high school or the more recent post-apocalyptic post-human Plague Birds.