The Fly (1986) Retrospective Review

By: Nik S

When anyone utters the name David Cronenberg, the first thing most people think of is deformed monsters and body horror. He's able to take mundane and ordinary things, like a common house fly, into a twisted monstrosity that can send shivers down your spine. Enter his 1986 remake, The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. It's a body horror film distributed by 20th Century Fox that doesn't get the admiration it truly deserves. It's such an entertaining movie that for being minimal in its sets, goes above and beyond in its practical effects. When people think body horrors their minds go to The Thing or Eraserhead, and while those are great movies none of them have the cringe-inducing moments The Fly has.

The movie follows Seth Brundle (Goldblum), an inventor who is dabbling in some major research that could "change the world as we know it" at least according to him. At a science convention, he runs into a reporter, Veronica Quaife (Davis) looking to find the biggest scoop. Brundle is able to get his flirt on with Quaife as he convinces her to come to his lab/home in a seemingly abandoned building to witness his newest contraption. Turns out what he's been working on is a teleportation device that can currently teleport an inanimate object from one pod to the other. He wants to stop testing with items and use a live test subject. As Quaife documents his progress, Brundle finally takes it to the next step by bringing in a baboon. His test goes about as good as you would expect in a horror movie when the poor animal goes from the first pod normally, to being inside out in the second. After some tinkering, Brundle decides to test himself in the transportation pods but isn't aware a small fly flew in with him. His whole world is turned upside-down when he becomes faster, stronger, and almost a completely different person by being selfish and rude to those he cares about. Towards the end, Brundle becomes the monster physically that his inner personality has become.

Cronenberg is no stranger to horrifying relationships in his films. If The Dead Zone has taught us anything, he can make us grow to like the couple and hope for the best before destroying it right before our eyes. While The Dead Zone has a happier ending, The Fly not so much. There is even a small portion of the movie where the audience is teased with a possibility that Brundle might actually be better mixing with a fly. He becomes more charismatic, happier, and like his relationship comes crashing down as the audience looks on in horror. We even get a tone shift from where our potential villain, Quaife's sexist boss played by John Getz, becomes a kind of antihero when confronted with Brundle's transformation. It makes the audience second guess if his evil is less comparable to that of Brundle's, but either way, you're cheering for the wrong side of things.

For those unaware, this is actually a reimagining of a 1958 film of the same name, done by David Hedison and Vincent Price. While the original is definitely a product of its time and campy, the reimagining really strives to be something new. It doesn't try to be flashy with the newest technology, and that is something that makes it great. Instead of just a silly horror movie about a guy turning into a fly, the 1986 counterpart deals with identity, sex, and self-control while the lead character turns into a fly hybrid. This is all summarized in one of the most chilling lines delivered by Goldblum: "Jave you ever heard of insects politics?" It's to tell the audience that he understands what he's becoming and that all he does now is purely instinct.

Though the movie came out thirty-two years, the makeup and practical effects are still some of the best in cinematic history. It's from small things like seeing Brundle tear off his fingernails in horror, to his face coming apart at the seams. While the fly puppet at the end can seem a bit dated in how it moves, how it looks is visually stunning. Cronenberg used what he had to his advantage, even down to the cinematography. Much like Poltergeist, he uses the twisting room technique to show off Brundle jumping around and climbing the walls. 

While the film may not have the budget some horror franchises have now, it certainly has more heart and scares than the modern ones would hope to have. The Fly is so underrated that it's almost a crime that not enough people have seen it. It's a movie that can really get under your skin and is hands-down one of Goldblum's best acting as a lead character. If there's one movie to experience this Halloween season it needs to be The Fly.

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