Ryan Corr, Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Robyn Nevin, Noni Hazelhurst and Jermaine Fowler star in Kiah Roache-Turner’s thriller.
First published in 1952, Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White, made a huge impression upon my childhood psyche when a teacher read it to our class during the late 1960s. For days, weeks, and months afterward, I dreamed of a friendly spider talking to a pig, calming my fears about common household arachnids. (In those dreams, I was the pig.)
Perhaps this explains my continuing fascination with spiders in movies. (Ants in movies were more of a nightmare, thanks to repeated television viewings of 1954’s Them!). In my adult years, I’ve especially enjoyed Frank Marshall’s Arachnophobia (1990), Ellory Elkayem’s Eight Legged Freaks (2002), Mike Mendez’ Big Ass Spider (2013), and Micah Gallo’s Itsy Bitsy (2019).
Kiah Roache-Turner made his feature directorial debut with the splattery, post-apocalyptic horror comedy Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014) and continued down that road with the funny and gory demon-fighting Nekrotronic (2019), as well as the sequel Wyrmwood: Apocalypse (2021). All three films share a similar bouncy, boisterous spirit of fun and adventure.
His latest film begins with a scene that establishes a daft, dark-humored tone, with a hint of a mysterious menace threatening bloody hell on a snowy winter’s night.
Quickly rewinding to a few days before, a small object from space streaks through the sky and cracks a window in a rundown apartment building. The small, spider-like creature that emerges soon becomes the beloved pet of Charlotte (Alyla Browne), who is 12 years old and already expressing her creativity through a collaboration with her stepfather Ethan (Ryan Corr).
This pleases her mother, Heather (Penelope Mitchell), who is overwhelmed by her newborn son, work-from-home career, and looking in on her mother, Helga (Noni Hazlehurst), who is suffering from memory issues, perhaps dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease. Ethan is likewise fully occupied by his day job as the apartment building’s super, which provides the family with their own apartment in the building that is owned by the grumpy Gunther (Robyn Nevin), as well as his night job as a comic book artist.
The family takes center stage in the film, and Kiah Roache-Turner’s screenplay deftly weaves their relationships together. Charlotte is reaching adolescence and displaying her own strong personality, which has become tangled because of her birth father’s departure from her and her mother. She and Ethan are becoming closer, but there are still strains that are evident, complicated by the financial pressures the family is facing.
These domestic issues are handled with authenticity, humor, and sensitivity, yet all the while the spider from space grows in size and strength. Once it frees itself from the glass jar in Charlotte’s room, it skitters around the apartment building, searching for food.
Darting around expectations, Kiah Roache-Turner mixes ingredients from creature features of decades past, together with genuine thrills generated from the limitations of the setting, a dose of sometimes nasty humor, and the sparkling chemistry of the cast. Alyla Browne is especially good as young Charlotte, who stands up for her family, and makes an appealing and realistic hero for our time.
Sting is fresh, funny, frightening, and fabulous for families, if not exactly family-friendly, if you take my meaning. (It’s rated R for violent content, bloody images and language). See it and shriek together.
The film opens Friday, April 12, in select area theaters, via Well Go USA. For more information about the film, visit the official site.
Dallas Film Now. 