A Spider Creature Feature with More Legs than Scares

The redback spider, also known as the Australian black widow, is the kind of creature that might shake a person’s belief in God. This Lovecraftian nightmare freak hunts its prey with balletic precision and squirts them with organic superglue before injecting them with a venom that liquifies their insides; it then binds the victim in a silk straightjacket so that they’re still alive when the redback drinks their organs. It mostly feeds on insects, but has been known to devour lizards, snakes, and even mice. The spider’s toxin is powerful enough to kill a human being if left untreated, and is especially harmful to small children. The good news is that an antivenom has been available since 1956. The bad news is that people have had ample reason to use it, as the redback thrives in the dampness of modern architecture, and counts mailboxes and the underside of toilet seats among its favorite hiding spots. 

In other words, Latrodectus hasselti doesn’t need much of a glow-up to star in a creature feature — it’s already one of the most terrifying critters on Earth. What “Wyrmood” director Kiah Roache-Turner’s “Sting” presupposes is… what if one of these eight-legged killing machines wasn’t from Earth? What if it rode into our atmosphere aboard a comet that crash-landed into a dilapidated New York City apartment building, and was then adopted by an emotionally fragile pre-teen girl who named it after Bilbo Baggins’ favorite sword and thought…