Nothing’s tantric with this Sting, a spider movie from Down Under that delivers a load. Of fun.

During a city-crippling ice storm, a Brooklyn apartment building gains an unexpected visitor: a rock from space that houses a dandy li’l spider. It’s found by Charlotte (Alyla Browne, Furiosa), a young girl who lives there with her family. From room to room and floor to floor, Charlotte traverses the complex via its ventilation ducts, foreshadowing the eventual activity of her new eight-legged pet, whom she names Sting and keeps in a jar.

This being an arac-attack film, Sting grows to horrific size — enough to give even the most hard-nosed he-man a case of The Shivers. Like Charlotte’s stepdad (Ryan Corr, Wolf Creek 2), who serves as the building’s super. We meet him running the basement’s trash compactor, which practically screams, “See you back here for the showdown!”

So originality isn’t Sting’s strong suit. Nor did I want it to be. From a spider movie, I seek only three things:
• spider action
• and lots of it
• without shoddy CGI

Is that so much to ask? Not for writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner. One of Ozploitation’s rising stars as the creative force behind the Wyrmwood zombie franchise, he delivers on all three. In initial, tiny form, Sting is computer-generated — required for the incredible title sequence, depicting the spider crawling through a dollhouse — but done without cutting corners. When the arachnid grows (and grows!) to sizes not even Australian spiders get, Sting is presented as a practical, in-camera effect, meaning it’s all the more terrifying — doubly so being built by Wētā Workshop, known mostly for its stellar work on everything Peter Jackson.

Although no Arachnophobia, Roache-Turner’s Sting does take a cue from John Goodman’s exterminator by casting Jermaine Fowler (The Blackening) to function as similar crowd-pleasin’ comic relief: “Let’s kill this bitch!” He nearly steals the show out from under all eight legs, a pair of balls and a couple of good jumps. —Rod Lott

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As his great aunt’s sole living heir, Tony (Roberto Guinar) inherits her Mexican mansion — lush landscape, spacious back patio and creepy clown doll included. 

The doll, named Payasito (“Little Clown”), is played alternately by a limp bag of rags and dwarf Margarito Esparza Nevares, whose white-greasepaint face suggests the unholy union of Bob Hope and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus performer Michu. Because it can, Payasito frightens Tony’s pregnant wife down a short flight of stairs to her death, but the baby is saved. 

Years later, that lucky embryo swells into Tony’s tot son, Roy (Alan Fernando), whose attachment to the doll rivals Velcro, glue traps and static cling. This skeeves out Tony’s new trophy wife, Doris (Mexico Playboy model Lorena Herrera). Every time she and her hoochie-mama pants try to hide and/or ditch Payasito, the damn thing escapes and/or returns and kills somebody. Repeat until you hit the bare minimum for feature-length qualification, which you can do if you direct the dwarf to move … verrrrry … slowwwwwly. 

Also known by its English title of Diabolical Inheritance, Herencia Diabólica is referenced in shorthand as “the Mexican Chucky.” Not to desiccate the corpse of director Alfredo Salazar, but he wishes this thing were mas like Child’s Play. In a still photograph, Payasito may strike you as creepy, but in motion, he inspires laughter; with Chucky, the opposite is true.

Salazar clearly exhibited better luck at the typewriter, where his formidable résumé includes screenplays for such Mexploitation mainstays as The Batwoman, the Wrestling Women, the Aztec Mummy and many a Santo adventure — yep, even the one with big-breasted vampire ladies.  —Rod Lott

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