Large mutant wasps are the stars of Stung, the debut feature of director Benni Diez. When we say large,
we are not simply talking about some few inches but several feet. These
human-size transmuted insects are out to wreck havoc on a party.
The film begins with a grizzly scene of a wasp killing a bee
in mid-air. That’s just for starter as we see later that these killing machines
are up to something more creepy. Well, traveling along the road to a high-class
elite mansion is one-van party company Country Catering. Julia (Jessica Cook) is the owner and boss of this inherited business. Driving for her is man-child
but good guy Paul (Matt O’Leary). Not really good in its purest form as he
constantly look at Julia in the passenger seat as she takes off her hoodie,
with nothing but a bra inside, and
change clothes. Julia is kind of uptight and irritable. She does not like
Paul’s music, his attire, and almost everything about him.
Arriving at the venue, the two-man business instantly sets
up and prepares for the garden party. Evening comes and it seems it will be a
fun night for the millionaire hostess (Eve Slatner) and her weird heir Sydney
(Clifton Collins Jr.). But soon, a large horde of wasps begin attacking the
guests. Being injected with the insects’ eggs, the stung person becomes a
cocoon and the larva inside him/her will shortly emerge into a gigantic adult. The party turns
into a massacre and Paul steps up to protect Julia. They retreat into the
mansion and hide in the cellar with Sydney and small-town mayor Caruthens (Lance Henrikson). But Paul knows they can’t simply hide forever. Taking another
daring act, he dashes into the enemy line and retrieves the key to the van that
will take them to freedom. That is, if he succeeds….
Stung is resonant
of those 1980s creature films where multitudes of animal or insects attack
countless innocent victims. Instead of relying heavily on CGI, the film employs
practical effects, resulting to much more dimensional and realistic creatures.
There are also sequences in the film which are Alien-style, particularly those moments when humans have a closed
face-to-face encounter with the expanded enemies. For gore fans, the movie will
excite you as it has plenty of satisfying blood and brutality. It is quite
gut-wrenching when the wasps break out of their cocoon, leaving part of a human
face here or a little dog’s fur there.
Stung belongs to
the category of highly-predictable films in which our guesses of who dies
first, who escapes but then dies, and then who survives in the end are almost
always correct. To compensate for its banal nature, the film should have worked
on its other elements to make it stand out. But nah, it suffers further with
its bland characters. It’s good that the goofy finally becomes the hero but it
feels not genuine. After his initial boyishness around Julia, Paul suddenly
becomes manly during the wasp attack, and then sexo-macho as he makes out with
her inside the ambulance at the end scene. Despite a long sleepless night of
warfare against the killer insects, the duo still have the strength for a
quickie. And no, the movie is not really about them, but about some wasps which
have mutated to extra-large versions after ingesting growth-hormone-infused
plant fertilizer (let’s not talk science please).
In spite of its fairly
impressive practical effects, Stung feels
old and miserly. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either. And yet, it is hard to
get angry with a movie that seems to require a lot of efforts to produce. It’s
like you want to roll your eyes with its obvious incompetence, but you just end
up drawn to it, smiling along the way.
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