Reviews
‘Sting’ Review – Throwback Creature Feature Entertains With an Impressive Practical Monster
Writer/Director Kiah Roache-Turner wears his influences on his sleeves in the throwback creature feature Sting. A mysterious object from outer space crashes into a New York apartment amidst a raging blizzard, where the mysterious spider inside it is discovered by a girl named Charlotte (Alyla Browne, Furiosa). Charlotte dubs her new pet Sting, unaware that it’s not from Earth and comes with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. As the spider’s reign of terror increases, so does Roache-Turner’s commitment to capturing the mayhem through stunning practical creature effects, which makes this film worth the price of admission.
It’s not just the spider’s pet name, derived from The Hobbit, or the effects by the 5-time Academy Award® Winner Wētā Workshop, led by Creative Director Richard Taylor, that calls the work of Peter Jackson to mind here. It’s also the film’s sense of humor, from the opening sequence that introduces a comedic exterminator (The Blackening’s Jermaine Fowler) to the building’s oft-quirky tenants. The exterminator’s initial antics, combined with the bickering between older tenants Noni Hazlehurst (The End) and Robyn Nevin (Relic, “Wolf Like Me “), feel in line with Jackson’s early splatter era. It’s the type of silliness that injects a sense of fun while we wait for the eight-legged menace to feed and grow to uncontrollable levels.
Working against the zaniness of the building’s residents is the central family drama centered around young Charlotte. Charlotte is fearless and intelligent, but beneath her tough exterior is a vulnerable young girl struggling with feelings of abandonment. Bonding with stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr, Wolf Creek 2) has derailed with the arrival of Charlotte’s newborn sibling, leaving her feeling further displaced despite Mom (Penelope Mitchell, Hellboy) trying to help. Sting latches onto the thorny relationship between Ethan and Charlotte, framing it as a new stepfather trying desperately and failing to connect with a child in dire need of a father figure, using it as the emotional backbone.
Browne quickly establishes herself as an actor that can turn on the final girl toughness or childlike vulnerability in an instant. Sting rests largely on her capable shoulders. Less effective is Corr, who is serviceable enough as the adult assisting Browne in the action-heavy finale but less so when it comes to Ethan’s emotional arc. Ethan often reacts in extremes, lashing out in frustration in ways that feel excessive. Smaller domestic woes get blown out of proportion. It can be jarring to the point of distraction, leaving you eager for the spider horror to kick into overdrive.
To that end, Sting delivers on its creature. Sting feels like a fully realized, albeit inhuman, character almost from the outset. Roache-Turner frames his spider with intelligence; there’s an amusing deviousness as small Sting strategically maneuvers about the building and sets about conquering it. The filmmaker also knows how to let the effects work shine, first by showing just enough of the spider in larger form to make its off-screen hunting moments intense. Then, through a full-on monster assault that borrows a page or two from Alien. In keeping with the throwback creature feature vibe, Roache-Turner also ensures that the deaths are inventive and mean-spirited. One extended death scene, in particular, keeps layering on the creature feature cruelty in inventive ways.
Sting is at its strongest when it focuses on the horror. The steady build-up to its showstopper finale offers tense spider horror moments as Sting slinks around air ducts or darkened corners and delivers more than one gnarly death. But the film is also rife with family drama that doesn’t quite mesh with the horror or overall tone. Thanks to Browne’s bold performance and an emphasis on practical creature effects, Sting works as an entertaining creature feature with a memorable new movie monster.
Sting is in theaters on April 12, 2024.
Reviews
‘Her Private Hell’ Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Returns With a Hypnotic, Inscrutable Neon Fever Dream
Nicolas Winding Refn considers his first feature film in ten years, Her Private Hell, a resurrection. At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the filmmaker revealed that his return was inspired, in large part, by his own mortality. His need to create art kicked into overdrive after beating death in 2023, when his heart stopped for 25 minutes.
Her Private Hell is pure art, too, bearing the filmmaker’s neon and synth signatures, as well as a deep disinterest in scrutable storytelling. Much like The Neon Demon, Refn’s latest demands you bend to its wavelength: an expressionistic vision more interested in the artistic process than the narrative.
That’s not to say that Her Private Hell lacks plot; this sci-fi horror noir features two central overlapping plots. At the forefront is actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who lives in the penthouse suite overlooking a hazy neon metropolis with her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and young stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who happens to be Elle’s former best friend before marriage got in the way.
To say that Elle has daddy issues would be an understatement, made worse by insecurities, the arrival of a new acting ingenue (Kristine Froseth), and a vicious killer prowling the city: the Leather Man.
The secondary plot follows the enigmatic Private K (Charles Melton), an American soldier in Japan with resolute vengeance on his mind. Whereas Elle’s world exists in a space of glamour and opulence, Private K pummels his way bare-knuckled through the sweaty backstreets ruled by local crime syndicates down below.
Refn, who co-writes with Esti Giordani, manages to corral a variety of seemingly disparate genres and influences into a clinically cold and cryptic whole. The filmmaker infuses his signature style with everything from ’60s sci-fi to Golden Age Hollywood melodrama to Japanese folklore, hung on the framework of a Dario Argento-style Giallo. There’s a prominent psychosexual edge to both Elle and Private K’s separate journeys, one that dials up to zany excess when it comes to the former character.
There’s an overarching sense of mystic mythmaking to Her Private Hell, with elusive seamstresses, played by Shioli Kutsuna and Aoi Yamada, dipping in and out like folkloric, omnipotent kitsune as they seemingly preside over the increasing chaos that entails brutal knife fights, Freudian melodrama, and a supernatural killer that brutally rips his victims apart. All of it told with Refn’s detached, sterile style.
It’s less a conventional movie and more a stream of consciousness, a collection of inspirations and personal thoughts and themes. Nothing is really explained in this nonsensical fairy tale fever dream. Thatcher gives herself fully to the spoiled Elle, whose affluent privilege makes her a bundle of raw, primal emotions that erodes her sense of identity and reality. It makes her the tonal and visual opposite of the elusive Private K., and much credit goes to Refn, Melton, and Thatcher for wringing compelling performances out of such nebulous, vague characters.
As with most of Refn’s work, you’re either on his frequency or not. Her Private Hell is wholly uninterested in explanation or convention. It’s also heavily disjointed and unhurried in its eclectic, sparse amalgamation of genre inspirations. Still, it’s tough not to fall sway to the magnetic allure of its exquisite, pulse-pounding sights and sounds, complete with an incredible score by legendary composer Pino Donaggio.
While it never fully pulls you into its tangled web of artistic musings, there’s a lot to admire in a technically stunning feature this fearless in its incomprehensibility and ambition.
Her Private Hell releases in theaters on July 24.
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