Surprising Similarities: Giant Spider Horror Movie and The Lord of the Rings

A familiar spider

This year, horror fans can head to theaters to discover Sting, an Australian feature film in which a young girl bonds with a giant man-eating spider. A film ready to make all arachnophobes tremble, and more particularly those who still shudder at the fight between Sam, Frodo and Arachne, the guardian of the pass of Cirith Ungol. Thus, we learn from Variety that the design of Sting's spider was thought of by Wētā Workshop, the New Zealand special effects studio founded by Richard Taylor who worked on the film adaptation of Lord of the Rings and who also won five Oscars during his entire collaboration with Peter Jackson. Richard Taylor spoke about this new project with Varietyand more particularly on his meeting with director Kiah Roache-Turner.

The first time we met, we didn't even talk about spiders. We just chatted about 80s horror movies, things we loved, things we grew up with, things that worked or didn't, things that scared us at the movies. (…) You instantly know that he has it in his blood, and you immediately want to work with him and do the best job possible, designing a character that will be memorable and fun. It's so much more enjoyable when the filmmaker has an instinctive idea of ​​what he aspires to do and a deep love for his craft.

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Bringing arachnophobia to the screen

Far from the blockbusters that Wētā Workshop usually works on, Sting is a modest project, but above all, a film for enthusiasts. With this feature film, Kiah Roache-Turner aspires to best convey the fear that spiders inspire in her.

I suffer from raging arachnophobia because I'm Australian, and everything in Australia is trying to kill you. We have giant crocodiles, great white sharks, some of the world's most venomous snakes, and spiders the size of dinner plates. Some of these spiders can kill you – if they bite you and you don't go to the hospital within three hours, you're dead. My job as a horror film director is to take my greatest fear and project it onto you and hope it makes you buy tickets, and there's nothing scarier in my mind than a bulldog-sized spider that can drag you into an air vent and eat you.

In France, Sting has already found a distributor, namely StudioCanal. But while the film has just been released in the United States, no French release date has yet been communicated. We will therefore have to wait before being able to discover this truly promising project.