Just to start, I should mention that Bestie is afraid of spiders so the thought of seeing this movie as a joke has crossed my mind a few times over the last few weeks, but ultimately I had no reason to waste an evening that I could spend at home ignoring my family or friends during the Cinejoy film festival 2024, which is why the way I ended up seeing Sting was with Friend during this month’s Scream Unseen, which I thought, judging by the runtimes, would actually be Abigail, but which was not. That’s not the point of this digression/intro, however. What I meant to say was, because Bestie has arachnophobia, I’ve been slowly accruing pictures of spiders doing crazy shit in case we ever have a falling out and I need to pull the ripcord or whatever and by ripcord I mean the “Send” button on a massive trove of spider-related nightmare fuel. I figure there isn’t a better time than this movie review to unpack some of those juicy pics.
My count for this month’s movies is eight so far, including the gremlin’s weekend movies of Labyrinth (Everyday since: “Did you remember the goblin king David Bowie?” PS When I told Brother and Sister about seeing it, he said, “Jim Henson went too far,” but the little monster I live with won’t stop calling me Hogle and herself Sara and she loves when I shout Luuuuuuuudo and compares every white dog she sees to Sir Ambrosius, so maybe he did things just right?) and yesterday’s Luca (Reacting to “Silencio Bruno”: “Did you remember the movie about mermaids?”). I can safely say that Sting sits somewhere very near the bottom of this month’s movies, though it’s not entirely without merit.
Sting tells the delightful story of a girl and her pet space spider, and about her step dad who’s doing his best moonlighting as a building sup so that he can eventually get his comic books about his step-daughter published and make it in the big leagues. The building in question that he supervises is owned by his wife’s aunt, whose business plan apparently is to rent out the building of apparently six apartments to two or three people who actually pay rent and then also her niece, her sister who has dementia, and herself. Anyway, the spider eats stuff because the apartment building, aside from being constantly dark no matter the time of day, is also extremely gross and has vermin all over. Eventually its Hunger gets to be too great and it starts eating people and the girl has to destroy her pet.
You might think from my description that this movie is kind of a creature feature, and you’d be wrong, because it’s actually mostly a very earnest, wholesome family film about a guy just trying to do right by his new wife and step-daughter, trying to raise his new baby son while also connecting to this girl through his art. “I can get behind a bratty punk script,” says Friend after the show, “But not schmaltzy feelsy script,” I fish, and he nodded. Everyone in this movie is just trying to do their fucking best and I’m here for it. Even the side characters with weirdly dark backstories like the Latina lady whose whole family died in a fire or whatever who drinks all her problems away and gets melted from the inside by the spider’s acid–she was trying her best, too.
We didn’t talk about this at the time but I do have some issues with the movie poster’s decision on the number of stingers to give the word Sting? Which seems too close to the poster for the Abigail movie, which is more appropriately two, because, fangs?
And I get it, Fanggrrl is the protagonist girl’s social media account, so maybe there’s something going on there, but actually she stops posting stuff after the second day of care-taking the space spider. Both of the posters seem like they’re actually Malignant’s poster?
While we’re at it, I spent a little time checking out all the movie posters that make little fangs out of the letters of the title of the movie which led me to this gem from last year:
Which, in turn led me to this lovely piece by Kris Moore about the 24 best movie posters of all time, which don’t include any with fangs.
The third act of this movie where Charlotte has to go full Rambo to put down her own creation is actually kind of awesome, even if it’s not super suspenseful or creative. There is no one that I would recommend this movie to and no reason it should be seen, and yet? The time looped structure is kind of cool? And the ensemble cast? And I was trying real hard to think about what I would take out, but all I could think of was stuff to add? More pop culture references? Friend wants more deaths, but I’m not here for the tragic space spider movie. I want one where most people are pretty okay and the only ones punished are other pets. Street justice. In Brooklyn. But inside. Also no one fixes the broken window from the second scene at the beginning of the movie, despite requests otherwise!
