One of the greatest children’s stories of all time would have to be Charlotte’s Web, is a wonderful story of how a pig and a spider are able to have a very special friendship relationship. What people may not know is that it is actually based on true events from author E.B. White’s time on a farm where a pig that was meant for food got sick and he tried nursing it back to health combined with a time he found a spider and an egg sack he helped through birth. Knowing all of this, it can’t be coincidence that the film I am about to review deals with a character named Charlotte and a spider.
Sting is the latest film directed by Kiah Roache-Turner (Nekrotronic) and stars Alyla Browne, Ryan Corr, Silvia Colloca, Penelope Mitchell, Danny Kim, Alcira Carpio & Jermaine Fowler. In an apartment building in New York City, Charlotte (Browne) lives with her mother Heather (Mitchell) and stepfather named Ethan (Corr). After a comet passes through their area, a spider egg hatches from its debris, and Charlotte decides to raise it as a pet, naming it “Sting”. However, this is not your normal spider since it came from outer space, and it starts to grow at an incredible pace. As you can expect, all of this can lead to deadly consequences.
For a film like this, there is some good acting like the three leads of Mitchell, Corr and Browne. I did particularly enjoy Danny Kim as the scientist with no emotion and seemed like he could care less if the house was on fire, but I have to give the acting shout out to Jermaine Fowler as the down to earth extremist who added some good comedy in tense situations.
Since that was the list of positives, you can probably guess that I did not like this film. Don’t get me wrong: I love a good horror film, but this does not work. It’s roughly ninety minutes long with the first two-thirds of it trying to build up the suspense into a big finale, which took so long I found myself bored at certain points. There also is an attempt to mix a horror film with family relationship issues, leading to a plot that is very predictable and even with trying to give a ”big surprise” at the very last scene, I actually called it almost an hour before it happened. I know they tried to make a horror film, but it started to become comical at points. There were times I was laughing instead of screaming on how bad it is. If you are thinking about seeing Sting, watch the official trailer instead since most of the scary parts of the entire film are there for you, saving you a lot of time and money. Due to some of the acting performances, this film does not get the “un-coveted Maze Runner” promise, but there is a chance it can make my worst films of the year list, which means I cannot recommend this film and I will not ever watch it again.