)[2] is a 2015 science fiction comedy horror film directed by Benni Diez, written by Adam Aresty, and starring Matt O'Leary, Jessica Cook, Lance Henriksen, Clifton Collins Jr., Cecilia Pillado and Eve Slatner.

In the film, a fancy garden party is thrown into chaos when killer wasps mutate into 7 ft (2.1 m)-tall predators and go on a grisly rampage.

The rural world of Mrs. Perch, a well-to-do elderly lady in New York, is all abuzz in anticipation of her annual garden party, a small but elaborate affair held in a villa at the remote estate where she resides with her son Sydney.

Unfortunately, thanks to an illegally imported plant fertilizer mixed with growth hormones which seeps into the ground, a local species of parasitic wasp mutates into significantly larger creatures.

Paul, Julia, Mayor Caruthers, Sydney, Mrs. Perch, and Flora (the cook) take refuge inside the house, barricading themselves in from the fierce attack.

The officers and paramedics look up into the sky, the ambulance doors open allowing Julia and Paul to see wasp-cow hybrids flying overhead with a cow bell ringing.

But it's the hard working underdogs who have to save the day, as the upper class crowd virtually turns into flesh eating über-wasps.

"[4] According to Diez, the questions he and his colleagues as modern independent filmmakers were asking was:"How can we try to put an indie-movie sensibility into this classic monster drama, and create characters that you believe, because they're very down to earth?"

[1] Diez cites comedic and satirical horror films such as Tremors, Gremlins, and Slither as additional influences: "we didn't want to play it too seriously because when you ask the audience to buy into human-sized wasps attacking people, you have to wink once in a while and make a little bit of fun of it.

"[4] Tasha Robinson remarks that while Stung is "a silly horror film about giant mutant killer wasps", it is also, at times, "a surprisingly sincere romance."

In her interview with Diez, he acknowledged that an early "elevator pitch" for the film was "Garden State vs. Aliens": "We just wanted to have those two genres clash, to see what happens.

The script for Stung was Adam Aresty's winning submission to a screenwriting contest launched by the German production company Rat Pack in cooperation with Fantasy Filmfest.

In another interview, Diez said the script "called to me on a few very profound levels, mainly to my inner child that watched Alien way too young and got messed up in the brain by it a little bit.

[4] In 2012, Diez shot a 90-second teaser trailer for Stung "for a couple of bucks" to convince people he could create giant wasps of "sufficient quality", which lead to the feature being financed as a German-American co-production.

[3] The film was financed through pre-sales around a year before the shoot... At that point crowd funding was discussed, but quickly abandoned, I guess because it would have been more work to handle the campaign than it would have helped the production.

"[5]And then I was out with a few friends in Cologne... having a few beers, and my phone rang, and my producing partner [Benjamin Munz] said, "Hey Benni, it's Ben, Lance is doing the movie."

"[4] In developing the character of Caruthers, Henriksen thought of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, reputed to have openly smoked crack cocaine or other drugs: "He's having a nervous breakdown, that's what he's doing.

Diez spent some time with them discussing the film's narrative style and aesthetics, and the composers developed test themes and musical approaches.

[11] As their ideas started to align,it became clear that "the best way to score this film was going to be via close-knit, hands-on work with as few barriers between us and the director as possible", which meant the composers had to make a few road trips.

[11] From there, with "85–90% of the cues locked down", they drove to Sound Mill Studios in Vienna, stopping in Nuremberg for a day and recording some strings in the home of Menke's grandparents.

[16] Heather Wixson of the Daily Dead rated Stung 3.5/5, praising the "incredible special effects, tons of wickedly fun kills, as well as a strong script from Adam Aresty that does an excellent job balancing out the humor and horror.

"[17] Writing for The New York Times, Andy Webster praised the monsters as skillful blends of "viscous textures with cheesy digital flourishes.

"[7] Andy Crump agreed, calling it a "creature feature calibrated to satisfy much simpler, old-fashioned pleasures", and gave the film a score of 2.5/4,[18] as did Dustin Putman (TheFrightFile.com)[19] and Slant Magazine's Chuck Bowen, who said: "The filmmakers maintain a tone that's mostly ideal for the contemporary equivalent of a drive-in movie: of reverent, parodic irreverence.

[22] Similarly, Michael Nordine of the Village Voice found it important that the film believes in what it is doing and said that it "delights in its own stupidity the way a dog rolls in dirt, but is nearly as difficult to get mad at after it muddies up the rug.

Martin Tsai, writing for the Los Angeles Times found the special effects "solid" but the human relationships less credible.

Club's Jesse Hassenger compares the film's couple to the one in Party Down:O'Leary and Cook are no Scott and Caplan, neither as sardonic nor as empathetic.

Their flirtation feels sweetly mutual, and once they're facing an unexpected danger, it turns into an alliance based more or less in equality—even if Paul whines that Julia "still treats me like an employee" 10 minutes into a crisis that begins while he is, in fact, employed by her.

[25]Assigning the film a C, Hassenger faulted the "final stretch", in which "nearly every scene feels drawn out to twice its natural length-and not as an exercise in unbearable tension."

Anton Bitel, writing for Projected Figures, agreed that the leads have charisma but found the script "perfunctory" and criticized the "low-grade CGI".

"[27] Trance Thurman, writing for Bloody Disgusting, assigned Stung 1.5/5 and said it took itself "far too seriously",[28] and Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News said that the film was missing "the fun", rating it 1 out of 5.