Horror Movie Review: Stung (2015)

Paul & Julia are catering staff hired for a wealthy lady’s yearly garden party where members of the upper class will wine & dine their way through the evening. Everything is going ok until the imported fertiliser used on the garden mutates the local wasp population & they attack the guests.

There have been a few killer bee movies over the years but not many surrounding everyone’s favourite bastard, the wasp.

These wasps are devilish as well; get stung by one them & you’ll be dead in seconds followed by an even bigger one breaking out of your corpse. Yes, it’s absurd but so much fun as bodies crack, split & fall into chunks to reveal a giant wasp within the remains. The effects are brilliant & one of the highlights of the entire movie for me are these massive wasps with bits of humans still attached to them (such as a face) go on a rampage!

After a slow start where we get to know both Paul & Julia (both are very likable) the garden party is interrupted by the rampaging wasps. Keep an eye out here for Lance Henriksen, I saw his name in the credits but genuinely didn’t know it was him until half-way through the movie. His role is small & uninspired but he gets an exciting death!

So the few survivors of the rampage manage to lock themselves in the house away from the wasps before retreating to the basement. Sydney, the odd-ball son of the parties host has been stung but implanted with a sort of queen wasp that will eventually take control of him as a host. It’s a fun little development & he hams it up well in the role.

Sadly it’s from this point that the movie takes a couple of mis-steps with the first being the sudden drop in pace. So much time is spent talking & planning that the movie begins to border on boring at times. It’s a predictable story & we all know where it is heading but it really takes its time getting there. An awkward love story between Paul & Julia falls flat & takes up far too much time. The problem is that they have little chemistry between them & it comes across forced.

Paul handles the role of hero well & he is clearly meant to appeal to a certain age group of men. He’s easily the most memorable of characters with some of his cheesy dialogue sounding way more convincing than it should.

Billed as a horror comedy, Stung won’t raise even a chuckle. The laughs are non-existent, instead to entertain; the film makes use of clever effects, great lighting & some stand-out gore. There is something very visceral about the giant wasps emerging from bodies that had me nodding my head in approval.

The finale is a strange one becoming quite dark & deep during an exciting chase sequence before returning to a more predictable route. I liked it up to a point because all throughout the movie I kept wondering where the rest of the smaller wasps can gone too & that question is answered in the final shot of the movie.

Entertaining mostly but has many flaws that stop it being one of the best creature-features.