Panic Fest 2024: Sting is a creepy crawly delight that pits a cute family against an alien spider

Sting. // Courtesy Well Go USA Entertainment

This is part of our coverage of local horror/sci-fi’s biggest event of the year, Panic Fest 2024. For more from the fest, click here.

If you long for the days of charming beastie-centric horror comedies like Arachnophobia, Gremlins or Tremors, consider this your all-points-bulletin: be on the lookout for Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting. Roache-Turner’s alien spider adventure is a throwback to a specific kind of horror movie we don’t see nearly as much of these days; a balance of scares, heart and humor that owes a lot to filmmakers like Joe Dante and Ron Underwood. 

A teeny-weeny meteor hits a Brooklyn apartment building in the midst of an ice storm, carrying a eight-legged baby spider with frightening intelligence and a taste for blood. When lonely pre-teen Charlotte (Alyla Browne) discovers the critter in her great-aunt’s dollhouse, she decides to keep it, naming the spider Sting. Charlotte’s new jar-dwelling, cockroach-eating pal helps distract her from her struggles adjusting to life with her well-meaning stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr) and new baby brother Liam.

Of course, Charlotte’s “pet” doesn’t stay jar-sized for long, quickly graduating from the apartment building’s insects to larger and larger prey. As Ethan, the building’s super, tries to figure out what’s causing a string of weird noises, pet disappearances and deaths, Charlotte slowly realizes that if she and her family are going to survive her alien arachnid friend’s voracious appetite, she’ll need to take matters into her own hands.

Sting features a tight, clever script that uses the apartment building setting to introduce unique characters who each add something specific to the plot. There’s socially awkward scientist Erik (Danny Kim) who studies arachnids and speaks in short, matter-of-fact sentences. Grieving singer Maria (Silvia Colloca) helps the overworked Ethan remember not to take his own family for granted. Charlotte’s memory-challenged grandma Helga (Noni Hazelhurst) is both the source of the movie’s delightful cold-open and the spider’s unexpected weakness.

Roache-Turner balances the entertaining scares (which are quite effective) with a sweet story about a family in an uncertain state trying to bond. The relationship between Ethan and Charlotte especially feels well-considered — we want them not just to survive the movie, but to grow closer together. All that character work makes the movie’s climax feel especially well-earned, as Charlotte and Ethan have to work together to save everyone.

The film’s script and understanding of its setting also have an almost Die Hard-level of efficiency and geography, establishing the location of each of the apartments in the building, and the all-important air vents that connect them, right off the bat. There’s not a wasted moment or a line that doesn’t help us understand the characters’ relationships to each other, their individual knowledge, or what’s going on in a given moment.

Sting is heartfelt and plucky, but more than that, it’s incredibly smart filmmaking of the kind that deserves to be made into a word-of-mouth hit. It’s enormously appealing, while still satisfying the bloodlust we want from a good creature feature. Roache-Turner’s love for his characters, dark sense of humor and precise sense of storytelling feel effortless, but they’re skills some filmmakers take decades to perfect. Get on this train early, because there’s no doubt it’s heading toward some exciting places.

Well Go USA Entertainment