Written and Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner
Produced by Jamie Hilton, Michael Pontin, Chris Brown
Starring
Ryan Corr as Ethan
Alyla Browne as Charlotte
Penelope Mitchell as Heather
Robyn Nevin as Gunter
Noni Hazelhurst as Helga
Silvia Colloca as Maria
Danny Kim as Eric
Jermaine Fowler as Frank
Tony J Black as Officer Miller
Cinematography Brad Shield
Edited by Luke Doolan, Kiah Roache-Turner
Music by Anna Drubich
Production companies Screen Australia, Align, Screen NSW, Cumulus VFX. Spectrum Entertainment. See Pictures, Pictures in Paradise
Distributed by Well Go USA Entertainment (United States). StudioCanal (Select territories)
Running time 92 minutes
Coming so soon after my review of Godzilla Minus One, I didn’t expect to be writing about another creature feature. Honestly, it isn’t my go-to genre. Most of them tend to be pretty dumb.
I watched Sting 2024 simply because the title caught my interest. Did someone try to do a remake of the Redford/Newman classic, and if so, exactly how bad was it? Yes, I sometimes watch a movie expecting a train wreck, and sadly, I’m usually right.
The credits told me it was an Australian production. Interesting. I had an immediate mental image of Nick Cave as Butch Cassidy. Apparently I had far too much fun in the Sixties.
Opening scene is an ice storm/blizzard howling in an aerial shot of brownstone tenements. Ah, good, I thought. They shot it in Brisbane. (If anyone reading this thinks Australia adjoins Germany, Brisbane has a subtropical climate. It’s more like Beirut, only without the endless civil war.)
Two meteorites flash over Brooklyn (yes, it takes place in Brooklyn). They’re big enough and low enough that realistically they should have shattered every window and most eardrums in the borough. Just ask the folks in Chelyabinsk—they have stories to tell.
After that, the surprises end. Shortly after the outer space show, a young girl finds an interesting-looking spider in her tenement flat, and as an aspiring pre-teen goth, decides to keep it as a pet. (Given that the only animal competition is cockroaches and rats, this doesn’t seem too odd a choice.)
Said spider grows. And grows, and grows. And eventually escapes. Plot complications ensue.
The plot resolution will come as no surprise to anyone who is even remotely genre-savvy.
It didn’t exactly set the world on fire. When I looked up the wikipage on it the other day, its world-wide gross was about $1.6 million dollars. Mel Gibson could make a six hour movie about ‘da joos’ and it would have wider audience appeal, sad to say.
So why am I reviewing what seems like a hum-drum flop? The acting and dialogue. They are both witty and engaging. Even the formulaic secondary characters, like the mean old Bronx landlady harridan, or the Stephen Fetchit bug exterminator have their moments. Granted, they have secondary roles as large houseflies which doesn’t add to their acting resume, but they get their chance to strut and fret before getting consumed.
The family of the girl, and the girl herself, are what make this actually worth watching. Her name is Charlotte, which I thought was a very nice touch, and she’s played by newcomer Alyla Browne. At first she seems overwrought and intent on scenery chewing, but that’s the character, not the actress. She’s playing a twelve-year-old wannabee Goth, after all. Interestingly, she and daddy are both writers and artists, working on a comic book project. As the story progresses and Charlotte’s web envelops the plot, Browne’s acting chops show through, and she reminds me of nothing so much as a juvenile Jodie Foster. And there are a lot of genuinely funny moments. The writers and directors do a good job of avoiding the cheap ‘gotcha’ jump scares, as well, letting the drama just build on its own.
Cinematic history is not being made here. But we may just be seeing the start of a great career, just as Foster’s was back in the ‘70s.