Stung
Director: Benni Diez
Writer: Adam Aresty
Cast: Jessica Cook, Matt O’Leary, Clifton Collins Jr., Lance Henriksen, Cecilia Pillado, Eve Slatner
Part of: /slash Filmfestival
Seen on: 27.9.2015
[Reviews by cornholio and Maynard.]

Plot:
Julia (Jessica Cook) has recently taken over her father’s catering business and is on her way to the first bigger client with her employee Paul (Matt O’Leary). Things start off well, the hostess Mrs Perch (Eve Slatner) seems happy, her grandson Sydney (Clifton Collins Jr.) is a little weird but jovial, the party gets going nicely. But then a swarm of wasps invades and they are not regular wasps. Within a short amount of time, there is only a handful survivors who have to stand agains 3m tall wasps.

I expected Stung to be in the same vein as Arachnophobia and after having so much fun with The Pack’s stupidity, I was really in the mood for a trashy film. But unfortunately Stung was completely disappointing and pretty boring.

Stung and I already got off on the wrong foot with the introduction of Julia and Paul. While I found Julia likeable enough and her worry about her precarious job position was completely understandable. But what remained a mystery to me was why she would hire Paul whom she obviously doesn’t trust and who obviously doesnt take her seriously as a boos. He wants to fuck her and in his head the only thing that keeps her from fucking him is that she is a little uptight – which he has no problem showing. The audience is obviously supposed to be with him on this, nevermind that it is a completely inappropriate employer-employee relationship. If they had just made them co-workers, it would still be galling that Julia is constantly objectified by the film, but at least it would reduce the disrespectfulness.

The film continued to get on my wrong side by making Sydney disabled (he has a hunched back). I’m all for disability represenation, but when you confalte it with Sydney’s sleaziness that seems to stem directly from his back, it becomes more than questionable. And then they went ahead and [SPOILERS] have a wasp lay an egg in the hump on his back. With all other people, no matter where the wasps stung them, shortly after a human-sized wasp would explode out of their bodies. In the hump – which is apparently not seen as part of Sydney’s body and therefore has to behave differently – the egg develops to smaller wasp that remains stuck to Sydney and somehow their minds melt together. [/SPOILERS] It is rare to have a person with disability so clearly shown as other, as not-human and frankly it’s disgusting and insulting.

I can forgive the film that biology is obviously not its strong suit. It’s a film about giant fucking wasps, who cares. And I probably could have swallowed both ableism and sexism, and even the slacker protagonist who turns out to be great in a crisis and gets the girl – I’ve swallowed worse.

But unfortunately the film refuses to be entertaining or funny to boot. With every passing minute I could feel my good mood disappear and at the end I just wanted it to be over – and the film isn’t actually that long. That’s not fun at all.

Summarizing: Skip it.