Stung review: A ferociously fun creature feature.
Stung review
Director: Benni Diez
Cast: Jessica Cook, Matt O’Leary, Clifton Collins Jr, Lance Henriksen
Running Time: 87 minutes
Certificate: TBC
Synopsis: Guests at a high profile garden party find themselves in a fight for their lives when a colony of killer wasps mutate into seven foot beasts.
Once upon a time Hollywood was taken over by a spate of films filled with ridiculous and ludicrously large bugs. Films such as Them!, The Nest and Eight Legged Freaks, are some of the better known, but there have been thousands that have dealt with deadly insectoids in some manor or another; Starship Troopers anyone? For the last few years however, this sub-genre has been confined primarily to the Sy-Fy channel, though Stung could change all that.
Plot-wise Stung isn’t going to win any points for originality. All the tropes and clichés you’d expect from a film like this are utilized, and yet you don’t hate Stung for it, but rather embrace it.
Stung review
We follow Julia and Paul, a two-person events company, Julia is the boss and Paul her bartender-come-dogsbody who just happens to be in love with her. The company is in a state of flux and transition, Julia having taken over the reigns from her recently deceased father. Worried that business is going to go down the tubes she needs their current job, a garden party for a rich woman and her adult son, to be perfection. Sadly for them the party is targeted by a swarm of mutant Africanised wasps.
Proceedings get off to a good start, the audience is introduced to all the usual suspects – the Latino maid, the eccentric old lady who loves her little dog more than her son, the awkward and weird forty year old man who still lives with his mum, the village seductress trapped in a loveless marriage, and the town mayor with a taste for booze and an eye for the ladies. It isn’t long however, before all our stock characters are running for cover as the wasps take over.
And when I say takeover I mean just that. You see, just one sting from these vicious wasps impregnates you with one of their own which rapidly expands and rips it’s way out of the host. The result is the highly unrealistic, but lots of fun, seven foot wasps with a taste for flesh. Stung never takes itself seriously and neither should the audience.
Stung has some incredibly likeable characters, Paul especially will have audience members rooting for him from the outset; he’s the loveable stuff-up. Stung is a very different film to actor Matt O’Leary‘s stint as The Brain in director Rian Johnson’s debut Brick. All his serious and riddle-speak replaced by a sense of fun and knowing comments. Paul is also an interesting take on the final girl, or boy in this instance, he’s the first to realise the threat and ridiculed for his worries. But then he’s also the one that does all the drugs, and the final girl also isn’t usually the comedy relief /sidekick, and yet Paul is somehow both.
The cast clearly had a blast with this and their fun is highly infectious, much like those wasp bites. Genre legend Lance Henriksen attacks his role with relish, though Clifton Collins Jr steals his thunder as the weird son, and yes readers, it’s Clifton Collins Jr so there are crazy prosthetics along the way.
A little gooey in parts, it might be advisable to skip the cinema snacks for this one. Stung is a ferociously fun creature feature; a gore-filled, black comedy with a sting in its tail. At a svelte hour and twenty minutes the pace never lets up, the ending is truly mind-blowing, and of course paves the way for a sequel.
Stung review by Kat Hughes, August 2015.
Stung screens at Frightfest on Thursday 27th August.
