Stung, or: I’ll Spare You the Bee Puns

This week Christa and I are reunited with the bad horror that brought us together in the first place and made the blog collab possible.  And it feels right.  Christa’s kicking off the month with a B horror film that is also a “bee” horror (okay, I’m done with the bee puns, promise).

The Film:

Stung

Where to Watch:

Netflix (US)

The Premise:

A quaint garden party is ruined when a sudden swarm of bees arrives—a mutant swarm of bees bent on destruction.

The Uncondensed Version:

Our film follows Julia and Paul as they drive to a garden party they will cater.  Wherever they are is really pretty and autumnal and makes me want to cry thinking about summer.  Julia is suddenly in charge of the family catering business after her father’s death, so she’s super tense and afraid of fucking everything up.

Could we be any more cliche as characters?  I don’t think so either.

Paul, on the other hand, is a bit more relaxed than Julia would prefer.  He’s also incredibly accident-prone, which is unfortunate for someone working with a lot of food and fragile glasses.  Paul is definitely into Julia, but she is focused on her business and doesn’t seem to have any inclination.

So of course the party is at a creepy old house with a bunch of rich people.  The son of the woman hosting the party is an awkward dude who looks and acts very much like a character from Jeeves & Wooster.  Since they’re rich people, they have a spoiled tiny dog that will ultimately spell their destruction (it seriously pays to be a cat person).  The dog manages to dig up…something.  Is it bees?  Spoiler:  yes, it’s bees.

Shadow puppets are always a hit at parties!

However, you know how this goes:  the bees are going to swarm from the earth only midway through the party.  They’ll be fashionably late.  By the time the bees arrive, the party has gotten pretty lame and it’s almost a relief that something makes this party memorable.  The mayor himself comments on how dead the party is…a statement he would surely regret if it ever leaked to the press.  Unless he were absolutely any of the current presidential candidates.

In the midst of the swarm, it turns out these aren’t ordinary bees (duh).  Once stung, victims become a sort of bee cocoon for giant human-sized mutant bees.  You might not want to watch this one if you’re afraid of bees.

THE BEES.

As you’ve seen in basically every B horror movie, everyone escapes INTO THE HOUSE.  To be fair, it’s not a haunted house, so they’re safe in that respect (but I’d watch the fuck out of a ghost bee movie).  Aaaaaaaaaaand the bodies start piling up.  Woman who’s been working for Julia’s family for years?  Dead.  Cougar hitting on Paul?  Dead.  Stoner musician?  Dead.  Rich old lady?  Dead.  All of these characters had to know they were just here to die.  Just like Julia and Paul are just hear to be the painfully bland, “relatable” leads.

Shortly after the start of the film, only Julia, Paul, the mayor, and the rich son are alive.  They retreat to the basement, where they sit around in the dark drinking vintage wine, which is probably a better party anyway.

One the bright side, mutant bee swarm at party negates the need for small talk.

Perhaps surprising to no one, the rich son turns out to be a bit of a dick bag and may have caused the entire situation with the mutant bees when he mixed fertilizer with hormones (???????????).  However, there is a price to pay, as he becomes a 2-headed bee mutant himself.  As it turns out, he expects Paul to join the mutant bees and be a father figure for him (even though they’re the same age).

But I mean most of this film consists of our heroes fighting giant bees.  Somewhat refreshingly, Julia saves Paul in the end; however, both characters are so insufferable that I barely even care about the feminist angle here.

Maybe you will for some reason?

The Rating:

2/5 Pink Panther Heads

This is true of all films I watch, but I really wanted this to be a conspiracy.  They almost went there with the potential environmental message and the bee daddy plot points, but any exploration of that was brushed aside in favor of gory bee action scenes.

I would like to emphasize that you should probably not watch this film if you fear bees as I imagine it is all of your nightmares made (sort of) real.  Prob if you’re Nic Cage you should avoid this one as well.

I’d also really like for the horror version of Jeeves & Wooster to happen now.  Jeeves would’ve kicked the shit out of those bees.  OR he would’ve become the most terrifying bee mutant valet.

Even though this was a bad horror movie that truly lived up to the bad part, I’m so glad we’re back to truly terrible films.  They are the heart and soul of this blog collab.

Did this film make Christa feel like a queen bee or would she squish it under the heel of her boot without hesitation?  Read her review here to find out!