The Fly (1986) Review (Favourite Films Series)

Tagline: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The Fly (1986) Review (Favourite Films Series)

 

In the 1980’s, there were a few horror films from the 1950’s that were successfully remade, most notably The Blob, The Thing, and The Fly. The original The Fly is a classic sci-fi/horror film, but it’s undeniably dated and silly in certain respects. The remake took a much different approach to the same overall concept, with vastly different results. To me, David Cronenberg’s The Fly is without a doubt one of the best horror movie remakes of all-time.

Seth Brundle meets Veronica at a meet-the-press evening for scientists and invites her back to his lab to pay witness to his invention that will “change the world.” He has invented a teleportation device—surely the biggest scientific breakthrough up to that point—but after Ronnie’s boss/ex-lover Stathis tells her the thing must be a joke, Seth invites her to not just write an article about his project but document the whole thing. You see, the “telepods” as he calls them aren’t perfected yet. Inanimate objects can be teleported, but living things get turned inside out, so his experimentation continues. Ronnie and Seth fall for one another, but Stathis isn’t leaving Ronnie alone, and when he realizes Brundle’s telepods are the real deal, he tries to interfere. Seth drunkenly teleports himself one night, and the experiment seems to go off without a hitch. In fact, it seems to have improved him somehow. He’s fitter, faster, and bolder than ever before, but as his body begins to change past the point of being improved, he realizes the mistake he made: a fly was in the telepod with him, and now he and the fly have become one. Ronnie might be the only one who can save him, as he begins to change into a new, monstrous organism.

The Fly is not at all a generic horror film, it is primarily a tragedy. The opening scene is the moment these two characters meet for the first time, and the whole thing is focused on the relationship first and foremost. It’s intriguing and fun to watch Seth lure Ronnie back to the lab and show her (show the audience too by default) his amazing invention. We know as much as Ronnie, and Seth knows everything, making the little reveals more interesting. Well, he doesn’t know everything, and then as it transitions into him experimenting and falling in love with Ronnie, the suspense begins to build. It’s no secret what will eventually happen to him, but the moment when he’s unwittingly fused with the fly comes at just the right point, and that’s another thing about The Fly that I think is so perfect: the pacing and the screenplay itself. There is no fat on this movie, it was perfectly trimmed (there are some deleted scenes, none of which were needed) to meet that sweet spot of ninety minutes, but the pace at which the story unravels is precisely what it needs to be.

There is a deliberate build-up to the scariness that really works, because by the time Seth starts to change, we’ve already come to like both him and Ronnie, so when things start going wrong, it’s not only gross and horrific, but sad, too. Like I said, this is a tragedy, and the way the relationship falls apart (plus, you know, Seth is also literally falling apart himself) is actually heart wrenching, which is quite something, given the guy is slowly turning into a disgusting monster. There’s one moment that always stands out to me as particularly revolting, when Ronnie first sees Seth in his decayed state—he’s starting to get pretty gross, but he’s still mostly recognizable. In very quick succession, he walks over to her using crutches, pukes digestive fluid on a donut, and knocks his own ear off, then they embrace in a hug, and she hugs him with her face on the same side of his head where the ear just fell off! The look of sadness and confusion on her face says it all.

Before I get into discussing the special effects and why they are a big part of what makes the later scenes work so well, I have to touch on the casting choices being another reason The Fly is such a uniquely entertaining movie. I already knew Jeff Goldblum from having been a fan of Jurassic Park for years before seeing The Fly for the first time, but Seth Brundle might actually be his best leading role. He’s perfectly quirky right from the start, but then when he starts going off the deep end post-fly-fusion, he gets to be quite scary, and then as he decays into ever less desirable forms, he conveys so much emotion and sadness that you can’t help but feel sad for him. Even under all the heavy makeup in the later scenes he still gives a great performance. Geena Davis, too, really sells it. You absolutely buy that she’s falling for him, but then the scenes with her and Stathis are also excellent, with her caught in between an old life with him and a new dangerous life with Seth, and struggling with her own issues. Even Stathis is scummy and easy to dislike, yet also still a compelling character.

Director David Cronenberg is known for his work in the horror subgenre of “body horror” which is specific to things going wrong with the human body and the horror of witnessing it or being subjected to it, so he was a natural fit for this take on the story of The Fly, given that in the wake of the experiment Seth doesn’t simply swap heads with the fly like in the original but rather slowly turns into a humanoid, fly-like monster. The practical effects were so good the movie actually won an Academy Award for best makeup, making it the only film in Cronenberg’s filmography to win an Oscar. Seth’s progression to more disgusting forms works with that excellent pacing I already pointed out, and the effects are nearly flawless. The final form is revealed in such a shocking way that I literally gasped and covered my mouth the first time I saw it, but I couldn’t look away, and couldn’t believe such an effect could look so convincing.

As gross and upsetting as it gets, The Fly also has something else going for it that I find keeps it watchable: a dark sense of humor. Some funny moments happen early on, but even when Seth starts falling apart, there are some humorous aspects. He keeps his lost parts in the medicine cabinet—his fingernails, ear, teeth—and calls it the Brundle Museum of Natural History. Pretty twisted, but pretty funny. He declares to himself in the mirror: “you’re a relic. Yes you are, you can’t deny it.” And the dialogue, too, is quite well-written—not just in the dark humor aspect, but in general. It doesn’t get bogged down in technical jargon or annoying banter. I especially like the way Seth explains to Ronnie why the computer doesn’t know how to teleport living flesh. It makes the big sci-fi ideas easily digestible (no pun intended) without losing any of the importance.

The Fly is such a well-made film that it defies being a remake at all, and stands on its own as one of the best films of the 1980’s. It’s a clear demonstration for how practical effects, when done right, will hold up for decades to come, but they must be in service of a solid script with compelling characters played by great actors. Every element about it, from all the things I talked about in-depth to all the other things I haven’t even touched on (like the conservative but epic music by Howard Shore or the iconic design of the telepods or the gut wrenching final moments) add up to make for one hell of a mix of horror, romance, and tragedy.