Sting (2024) Review – A Highly Confused, occasionally enjoyable Creature Feature

Welcome to Knockout Horror and to our review of Aussie creature feature Sting from 2024. This movie is all over streaming platforms and might be worth a watch but prepare yourself for some serious tonal confusion.

It’s a big alien spider horror thing…

Sting follows the story of a young girl called Charlotte (Alyla Browne) who lives in a New York apartment with her mother, brother and step-father. While raiding her great aunt’s dollhouse, she finds a small spider that she decides to keep as a pet.

Naming the arachnid Sting, she discovers that the creature can replicate her calls and has a ravenous appetite.

Growing ever larger, it soon becomes clear that cockroaches are not going to be enough to satiate the enormous creature, leading Charlotte to wonder just what she has unleashed on her family.

Sting plays out as part creepy crawly horror, part familial drama movie, and part comedy. Let’s be perfectly honest for a second, these types of films write themselves.

How many people do you know who absolutely despise spiders? Arachnophobia is incredibly common. The formula couldn’t be more simple. Make the spider as creepy as possible, throw in some great scares, and keep the laughs coming to balance the fear factor.

It’s hard to fail if you get those elements right so why does it feel as though Sting misses the mark in such a big way?

A little context

Sitting down to watch a movie just before Christmas, my fiancée and I decided to throw on Violent Night. We assumed it was a horror but quickly realised that it was actually far more of an action movie Still, we found ourselves to be having a pretty good time.

There was one problem, though… I just couldn’t shake the feeling that it didn’t know what the hell it wanted to be. It is trapped somewhere between a Gremlins like, family-friendly Christmas romp and a bloody, ultra-violent action movie.

Sting is an even more egregious example of this very phenomena. For a start, our protagonist here is a 12-year-old girl. She’s a little rebellious but all she wants from life is to be noticed by her step-dad.

She travels through the apartment block’s air ducts and uses gadgets like a modern-day Kevin McCallister. She cries when her parents don’t understand her and she misses her real dad.

We are going to spend the majority of the film flitting between familial drama and kid’s adventure movie before Sting finally grows some balls and becomes a proper creature-feature. It’s tonally confused.

“Sting is an even more egregious example of a horror movie not knowing what it wants to be.”

It’s actually tough to overemphasize how much tonal whiplash this movie will give you. One minute it is whimsical trips through the apartment’s ventilation system before it suddenly switches to the kid’s lousy step-dad flipping his lid over some minor shit.

The whole thing wraps up with some absolute mega violence featuring skinned animals, horrible killings, tons of swearing, and a lot of terribly executed comedy. I have no idea who the hell this movie is made for.

Who is this made for?

In fact, I would go as far as to say that this is one of the most confused horror movies I have ever watched.

On one hand it is a mild kid’s horror movie like Small Soldiers or Eight Legged Freaks, with a heroic kid donning a water pistol to fight back against the baddies. On the other hand it is a violent horror featuring barbaric acts of brutality that no kid should ever really be sitting down to enjoy.

It gets even more confusing when you throw in some Police Academy-style comedy. It is a mess and the movie suffers massively for it. It’s like Guillermo del Toro does Batteries Not Included with Damien Leone advising on gore-quota.

Very few adults are going to relate to, or enjoy, the character of Charlotte. Most are going to find her bratty, needy, and a bit obnoxious. Step-dad Ethan is a horrible cunt, and everyone else in the film is a basic horror caricature or, worse still, an offensive stereotype.

“It is a mess and the movie suffers massively for it. It’s like Guillermo del Toro does Batteries Not Included.”

Barely any of the characters are likeable and the plot is legitimately infantile. I’d say it might be for mid-teen kids but even they will probably find a lot of the drama elements cringe. Don’t even get me started on the movie’s bile inducing ending. Simply put, nothing here lands and there is no intended audience.

The violence is not gory enough for proper horror fans but it is far too gory for the kids who might enjoy the childhood whimsy of Charlotte’s adventures. The comedy will likely appeal to nobody because it is just so awful and the “cancer diagnosis levels of serious” family drama couldn’t feel more out of place.

It is impossible not to come out of this movie feeling a little dazed and confused. It is consistently inconsistent and has no clue what it wants to be or who it wants to appeal to which seriously undermines enjoyment of the entire thing.

On the plus side

There are a few positives, however. The movie is just so simple that it is likely to appeal to non-horror fans who just want some basic scares. You can’t go too far wrong with a creepy spider jumping out from nowhere and webbing up unsuspecting victims. The Hollywood-style high production values help with that, too.

Some absolute sadists may enjoy the comedy, so I suppose that deserves a mention. Hell, there may even be a few adults out there who never got over their own daddy issues that may enjoy Charlotte’s specific family-life struggles. 

“The makers of Sting threw every piece of shit at the wall hoping the sticky mess would create a cohesive horror.”

Some of the creature design is pretty decent. Sting is clearly based on a black widow spider and looks fantastic. Scenes focusing on the creepy design are sure to send shivers up the spines of people who hate arachnids. They’ll be freaking out at every little tickle on their arms for the next week or two.

As mentioned earlier, the movie feels very high budget and there is that distinctive Hollywood sheen coating every surface. Some of the shots were quite creative, here and there, as well and the CGI used isn’t too distracting. 

Alyla Browne has a promising career ahead of her, too. She is a very confident young actor and works with facial expressions a lot better than most actors her age. I also really enjoyed Jermaine Fowler as exterminator Frank. Relic‘s Robyn Nevin is clearly having a great time chewing the scenery as Helga which I liked and most of the cast does just fine.

The problem with Sting is simply one of a confused identity. It doesn’t know what it wants to be and it never feels comfortable in its skin. Nothing gels because it just doesn’t fit together smoothly and a consequence of that is a constant feeling of stopping and starting that prevents it from really getting going. I’d suggest the movie Cold Storage as a much more fun and tonally consistent alternative.

Our Scoring Philosophy: A Fair Fight

Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.