Following Adam Sandler’s midlife-crisis meeting with a comforting off-world spider in Spaceman, here’s the discomforting youth variant. Like E.T. gone wrong, director Kiah Roache-Turner’s underdeveloped but briskly suspenseful, suggestive arachno-shocker sees a kid with family issues find solace in alien company. Only this spidery E.T. will gobble you up before it phones home…
A clever opening sees a chunk of meteorite crash through the window of a New York apartment block, land in a doll’s house and crack open to release spidey. Prone to scuttling through air ducts, pre-teen Charlotte (a likable Alyla Browne) finds it, feeds it and names it Sting, after Bilbo’s dagger. But this critter grows fast – and soon uses the air ducts itself to hunt (human) food.
