PopHorror Let's Get Scared
I’m going to say a big fat “no” to huge, hairy spiders invading my home. Just, no thank you. Unfortunately, the characters in the new film Sting, don’t have that option when Sting, a spider that starts so cute and small rapidly morphs into a gigantic maneater after tween Charlotte (played by the incredible Alyla Brown – 2024’s Furiosa), a plucky, lonely girl looking for companionship, brings the arachnid into their tiny apartment. Just burn it all to the ground!
I have to say though, that there’s more to this movie than just spectacular special effects, the aforementioned terrifying man-eating eight-legger, and some harrowing scenarios. There’s also a lot of heart and it did make me cry a bit during the scenes between the brave Charlotte, and her loving but may-be-trying-too-hard stepfather, Ethan (Ryan Corr – 2013’s Wolf Creek 2). This film sucked me in from the moment I saw the trailer on the big screen. I’m happy to say, it did not disappoint, and Sting is easily one of my favorite movies of the year thus far.
To celebrate the release of the film into theaters, I chatted with writer and director, Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead) about his biggest fear, using practical effects, horror movies, and more!
Kiah Roache-Turner: I like waking up in the morning and talking about spiders. It’s my favorite thing!
PopHorror: I loved Sting so much. I can’t wait to talk to you about it and I can’t wait for everyone to see it.
Kiah Roache-Turner: I’m always happy when somebody even knows my films exist. So, when somebody says they like it, oh dude. It lights a fire in my heart so thank you, thanks for saying that.
PopHorror: When I saw the trailer before another movie in the theater, I was like, holy shit! What is that?! I knew I needed to see it.
Kiah Roache-Turner: That’s the reaction that we’re definitely hoping for.
PopHorror: What inspired the story and how did the project come about?
Kiah Roache-Turner: Weirdly, the project came about when I was having a meeting with James Wan’s producer. He was telling me about this template they use, which is a single location, one family, one monster. I’m like, hmm, that does sound like a really good template. I wonder if I could write something around that template. So, I was like, okay, I’m going to use my family because we’d just had a baby at the time, and I’ve got this beautiful stepdaughter that I love. We were going through Covid at the time, so I was like, oh there’s some drama in Covid and the family, I’ll just use that. And I’m like, okay, a single location is totally going to be an apartment building, that’s fine. I want to trap them in there like they’re trapped in the Nostromo in Alien. In Alien, they’re trapped in space, in this one we’ll set it in New York, and we’ll trap them in a snowstorm so they can’t really leave. But what’s the creature going to be? I can’t do zombies. I’ve done that. I can’t really do demons and ghosts because James Wan’s done that. Everybody does that. I’m like, what am I most scared of? And because I’m a hardcore arachnophobe, the scariest thing I could think of would be a giant spider the size of a bulldog who bites you, incapacitates you, and you’re alive and awake when it drags you into the air conditioning duct and starts to slowly eat you. I just couldn’t think of anything worse. So, I wrote the script, and here we are.
PopHorror: I love single location set horror films because I think that’s terrifying when you have nowhere to go, or you can’t get out. Or you’re trapped in your home and it’s coming at you in your most familiar and comfortable safe place. I love that. That’s my jam.
Kiah Roache-Turner: There’s kind of nothing scarier than being in your own house at night and hearing a noise. This is the best set-up. There’s no better set-up.
PopHorror: You mentioned that you’re an arachnophobe and you’re terrified of spiders.
Kiah Roache-Turner: Yeah, to the point where I cry like a little baby when I see one. It’s pathetic. I’m really scared of them. Making this film was a trauma.
PopHorror: That was one of my questions. A lot of people are terrified of spiders and what scares you the most. Your answer being spiders, what was it like having to work with the story, the kills, and the spiders? What was that like for you?
Kiah Roache-Turner: It was horrible. I had to do all this research and look at spiders and it’s like, if you’ve got a fear of blood, you don’t want to become a paramedic. I was just absolutely splashing around in my own fear. Even when I was writing it, I’d be typing and just going [looks over shoulder], thinking there were spiders. There’s a little scene where he thinks that his USB hub is a spider. That literally happened to me. I was typing where the spider was crawling up, and I went, “Oh, Jesus!” And it was just my USB hub so I was like, oh I’ll put that in the movie. But yeah, it was horrible. I was hoping that making a film would be like closure or like it would cure me in some way because I keep looking at spiders, maybe there’d be some kind of therapy in that. It hasn’t helped at all. It’s just if anything, it’s made it worse because now I think about more.
PopHorror: That means that you did it right because you scared yourself writing it, making it, and now you’re still scared of them.
Kiah Roache-Turner: Yes, yes. It’s really great to see how many people don’t want to watch the film, which seems like that’s not the sort of thing that a filmmaker should say, but whenever people are like, “I can’t, I just can’t,” I’m like, oh good, I’ve tapped into a zeitgeist. Like this is good. It’s the same with Jaws. Nobody wants to watch Jaws, but they watch it because it’s such a good film, but now nobody wants to go in the water. If you can tap into a zeitgeisty thing, and that 35, maybe 40% of the people on Earth are scared of spiders and big ones, that’s when you know you’ve got something that’s probably going to do okay.
PopHorror: Yes! The practical effects from the Wētā Workshop are phenomenal. How important was it to you to use practical effects?
Kiah Roache-Turner: There’s something about practical that you need. You need both. You need to do a bit of digital and a bit of practical, like just logistically, and there’s some things that digital can do that practical just can’t. But whenever I see a film, especially a horror film that leans too heavily in the digital world, it’s not good because it’s just uncanny valley immediately, and the whole point of horror is it’s a tactile medium, so you’re scared of a thing that is there. If it’s digital and it doesn’t have a weight, it’s less scary because it feels more supernatural or something and it doesn’t feel like it’s there. The only time that we really used digital with the spider is when it’s very small or when it’s wide in frame so when you can see it wide in a frame climbing around, obviously you can’t really do that with a puppet and so that’s where we went digital. But anytime it’s interacting with an actor or anytime we’re in a medium or a close-up, I wanted that interaction with the performers. I don’t want them screaming at a tennis ball. It’s so much better when you’ve got the legs actually grabbing at them, they can look the spider in the eyes – all eight of them – and really, really react to something that’s in front of them. Like when you can see that the puppet is interacting with the smoke, and the light and dark and the wetness that’s the rain falling, you just know it’s there. That’s something they did really beautifully in Alien. You see Alien and all that saliva dripping down off of it and you can see it grabbing the actor and leering into its face as that horrible tongue comes out. That’s all practical. Like you can’t beat that, and so as a horror filmmaker, I really try to lean into practical as much as I can.
PopHorror: I appreciate that because I hate nothing more than digital blood.
Kiah Roache-Turner: Yeah, and you pay the price for it. There’s a moment where somebody gets his head bitten off and there’s a huge bucket of blood that explodes, and it’s quite a full-on kill. We were shooting at one in the morning yelling at a blood bucket, like so tired and we’re going, “Rain machines! Get the blood! Oh, goddammit that’s not enough. We need more blood!” It’s so hard to do whereas it’s so much easier just to go, “Fix it in post.” But it doesn’t look as good, so yeah. I think the audience sees it. I’ve had digital head explosions, I’ve had practical head explosions, and the practical ones, they win every time.
PopHorror: The father/daughter chemistry between Ethan and Charlotte is so wonderful. What was casting like for you?
Kiah Roache-Turner: The casting of Alyla Browne as Charlotte was the easiest thing I’ve ever had to go through. I started talking to the casting director, Nikki Barrett, and I was like, “So what we’re looking for is-” and she goes, “Shh. Just cast Alyla Browne.” And we did. That was it, man. She goes, “Look, you don’t have to think. Don’t worry about it. Just cast her, she’s a genius.” And I think I looked at about two minutes of footage of her doing something and I was like, “Is she available?” And that was it, that was the casting process. The casting process was me convincing her and her mother to let me throw her at a giant spider and have her crawling down air conditioning ducts and be in a crazy horror action film. She shouldn’t have done it, to be honest, because she was just coming off three films in a row. She’d just come off Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and she was tired, man.
PopHorror: I bet!
Kiah Roache-Turner: She’s this 12-year-old girl who hasn’t had a break all year and instead of having a break, she read the script, she loved the character, and she was like, “I have to do this.” All through the creation of Sting – the shooting of it – she was just dog tired, and I think some of that probably helped. There are a few breakdown moments where she’s just heartbreakingly good and I think some of that was her just going, “I haven’t had a break in six months.” But she’s such a good actor. I really enjoyed working with her. She’s a big star.
PopHorror: She was phenomenal. I loved the scene between her and Ethan when they’re fighting, and he drops the bombshell about her dad. Just the raw emotion of both of them, that scene sticks out to me really more than some of the spider scenes, just because of how good she is. He was good too, but I’ve never seen her in anything before and she just blew me away.
Kiah Roache-Turner: Even cutting that scene I cried a couple times because now I’m in my mid-40s and I cry a lot. I’m getting emotional.
PopHorror: Same!
Kiah Roache-Turner: Yeah, that scene is just crazy good. So, you understand. I cry at insurance commercials now. I’ve just got something in my eyes. Welcome to your 40s, man, you get very emotional. It’s okay, it’s just being human. I think as a director it’s a good thing because I feel things very, very deeply and so do actors, and that’s probably why I get along with actors. We’re both big babies.
PopHorror: I have just one last question for you today. What’s your favorite scary movie?
Kiah Roache-Turner: I can never do one. You could like a top three or something. My holy trinity is always Alien, Jaws, and The Thing, but that’s leaving out Evil Dead 2 and just so many other things. But for me, there’s something in those three that I’m desperately always trying to achieve. I’d have to say Evil Dead 2 because just the camera banks running around, and the insanity and humor. The Thing, just for the practical effects and the single location, and the camaraderie between the men, and the sheer sense of fun. Jaws is like the perfect Hitchcock mixed with David Lean. It’s just such a well-made film. And Alien is just… I don’t have words to express how good Alien is. Ridley Scott… I mean, my god the directing in that film is good, and the casting and how seriously they took all the characters. Nothing beats the H.R. Giger creation. Oh, but now I’m leaving out The Exorcist! The Exorcist is, unquestionably, the scariest film I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I thought I was going to be possessed by the devil when I saw it. I couldn’t get over that film for years.
Thank you so much to Kiah for taking the time to speak with us. Sting is in theaters nationwide now!
