Sting director Kiah Roache-Turner says an R rating only made sense for the graphic spider horror – which uses a 100lb practical spider for the film's scares.
"Any horror filmmaker who makes a film PG should be shot for cowardice. Horror is an R-rated medium," Roache-Turner tells Total Film in our new issue out on Thursday April 25, which features Furiosa on the cover. "It was important to have a scene where a spider crawls up a woman’s face, into her mouth and into her stomach."
The film takes the average fear of spiders and turns into our worst nightmare: 12-year-old Charlotte's decides to trap and keep a spider as a pet...only for it to rapidly transform into a giant flesh-eating monster. As her neighbors begin to disappear one by one, Charlotte and her family find themselves in a desperate fight for their lives against an eight-legged freak with an insatiable appetite for human flesh.
- John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush's twisted chiller is a much-needed shake-up to the horror genre, disrupting harmful elderly stereotypes embraced by the likes of X and The Shining
- The Monkey director explains why it was so important to him to give Stephen King's "chilling" short story a "playful horror" twist: "I think [that] seemed correct for a movie about a toy"
The cast includes Penelope Mitchell (Hellboy), Jermaine Fowler (The Blackening), Ryan Corr (House of the Dragon), Silvia Colloca, Noni Hazlehurst (The End), Tony J Black (Apples Never Fall), Robyn Nevin (The Matrix franchise), Rowland Holmes (My Pet Dinosaur), Alcira Carpio (Strife), and Danny Kim (Born to Spy).
Roache-Turner worked with Weta, the FX company that does practical effects for HBO's The Last of Us – so we're in for some pretty realistic scares.
"It’s my worst nightmare. I want to scare the pants off people. I was so glad I was
able to work with [visual effects supremo] Richard Taylor – he’s a god – and that Weta were able to build me a practical creature. There’s nothing more gratifying than to shove a 100lb spider in an actor’s face, and watch them actually scream for real."
Sting is released in UK cinemas on May 31. And you can read more about it and a whole lot else besides in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, April 25.
Check out the covers below:
Pre-order the issue here to bag your copy, or click here to subscribe to Total Film and never miss another exclusive. You’ll get every issue before it's in stores, and you’ll get subscriber-exclusive covers.
