"I like to get things as horrible and tense as you can, and then burst the bubble with a laugh," says Sting director Kiah Roache-Turner. He might have made a movie about a giant flesh-eating spider, but he's not here to traumatize you. "That's just how I go about things. But then look at a film like Hereditary. Man, it's brutal, but it's so good. The Witch, by Robert Eggers; no laughs in that. It's just two very different ways of looking at it," he tells GamesRadar+. "They say films have to be a bit of a reflection of you, and I just like to have a laugh. I hate when I'm sitting with an audience, and there are just long periods of silence. I'm like, 'You guys should be having fun. You paid your 20 bucks, you should get the whole lot: laughter, tears, screams.'"
The Australian writer-director put a lot more of himself into the upcoming genre flick than just his sense of humor, too. Starring The Blackening's Jermaine Fowler, Relic's Robyn Nevin, Wolf Creek 2's Ryan Corr, and Furiosa's Alyla Browne, Sting sees rebellious 12-year-old Charlotte (Browne) unknowingly bring a deadly, arachnid-resembling alien into her family's Brooklyn apartment – after it crash lands in her granny's dollhouse. Over the course of a few days, the comic book-obsessed youngster, who's having a hard time bonding with her illustrator stepfather Ethan (Corr), keeps her new pet plied with all the cockroaches she can find, which leads to its inexplicably fast growth. Before long, though, the entire block's residents find themselves fighting for their lives as the rapidly evolving beastie goes hunting for much bigger snacks.
