3 out of 5

Directed by: Benni Diez

There are some big problems with ‘Stung,’ although, by my opinion, not the big problems Simon Abrams seemed to have with the film, which seem to stem from a very personal hate for a pretty generic many-genre trope – and there’s a lot of referencing to dudebroism in his review, so it might not be the trope and it might be some bad dudebro experiences – but the world is filled with dudebros, and not all of them are in well-meaning horror romps, and besides… our dudebro, who I found to be pretty funny as played by Matt O’leary, is matched to a dudechick in Jessica Cook’s Julie, who gets to play the glasses-wearin’-but-here’s-my-bra smart hot chick role.  NO ONE WINS, SIMON.

So Matt and Jessica are caterers at a rich person’s party hosted at a conveniently isolated mansion, and then the dog digs up a wasp nest… filled with dang giant hornets that go all gooshy when smooshed.  Oh, and also take over your body when you’re stung, which of course starts to happen en masse, causing our leads and some stragglers to hole up in the mansion to try and survive the onslaught.  Yes m’dears, it’s a creature feature flick, and one with some pretty fantastically goopy effects and mostly well-placed CGI, and if there’s any question about the vibe at which the film aims to achieve, I’d point to the wonderfully kooky Goonies-eque adventure music trilling along the whole while.  Stung ended up winning me over with some of its overkill moments, particularly toward the end, but there are some rather horrendous issues with it that these moments had a hard time surmounting.  Namely: pacing, and a waste of characters.  To speak to the latter first, since that’s a lesser evil, we have some potentially worthwhile roles given to Lance Henriksen and Clifton Collins Jr., but the former never feels like he’s given enough of a reason to exist beyond a name on the bill, and the latter – while clearly delighting in the oddball part he’s given – is stifled by the film’s more grevious flaw of pacing.  ‘Stung’ gets right down to business pretty early on… which creates the question of where the hell things are going to go for the remaining, like 70 minutes.  They do a bug-birthed-from-body thing as soon as possible, so that reveal is gone, and when the insects are full grown, besides some coloring differences, they all look primarily the same, so there’s not much of a creature reveal.  Even the Big Bad they eventually roll out looks… pretty much like the others.  So the film has a stop/start flow to it where its moving moving moving for a few minutes and then it hits a wall, director and/or writer suddenly unsure where to go from there.  Also, in the initial break-out, no one is responding as panicked as it seems they should be, except for the one or two extras told to throw themselves around the screen.

…And if the effects weren’t a blast and the overall film not delivered with such cheeky energy, these flaws would have been enough to sink it.  It didn’t play out that way, happily, and we got our expected ridiculous ending and a peppy score marching us the whole way there.