Strictly average movie

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Blistering performances.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The FlyThe 1986 remake of The Fly by David Cronenberg is a prime example of 80's horror movie making at its very best. Films like this and John Carpenters The Thing (another remake) are types of movies that just aren't made anymore. Sure there's plenty of the horror genre that make it on to the big screen but today we live in a world of CGI. Nothing onscreen seems to have the texture or the tactility that makes the audience believe that they could reach out and touch what is onscreen.The Fly tells the story of Seth Brundle played superbly by Jeff Goldblum. A brilliant scientist who's on the brink of one of humankind's greatest accomplishments. He has figured out how to teleport matter from one space to another. This would change the worlds concept of travel forever. By using two phone booth like devices known as telepods he is able to shift an object from one pod to the other. Brundle is struggling with the teleportation of living matter. A gory scene involving a baboon demonstrates this. With the aid of Journalist Veronica played by Geena Davis who documents Brundles progress they eventually make a break through. What follows isn't just a chilling yet repulsive horror thriller but a movie that is deeply character driven.An inspired choice was to cast Goldblum in the lead role. His superb range allows him to create and develop certain traits as his anatomy and humanity begins to change.A man desperate for his creation to be a success Goldblum's character impatiently decides to go through the teleportation process only to unknowingly have a common house fly go along with him for the trip. Their DNA is spliced together on a equal molecular level which goes on to create something new entirely."Be afraid! Be very afraid!"This brings me to points raised earlier. What follows is the journey of man who goes from being human to something unknown to Science and nature. Not man, not Fly! A monster that will hurt you if you stay! This is achieved not through computer generated imagery but through practical effects. Prosthetics and animatronics. The ooze is real. The props are real. There's no CGI blood here thank you very much! This is a film that sticks to your skin making it crawl as you witness Brundles transformation. Both Goldblum and Davis are brilliant together. Their onscreen chemistry making you care for them. This makes Brundles demise all the more painful.I first watched The Fly when I was a young kid. I remember being terrified by it and by all rights I should not have watched it at such a young age. Revisiting this movie as a forty two year old, I was prepared to be disappointed. Absolutely not! This movie stands the test of time because it is a great film. Just as Jaws isn't marred by its forty year old special effects. That film is much more than just a rubber shark. The Fly is much the same. It is brilliant because of Goldblum and Davis's performances, Cronenberg's direction and Howard Shores haunting score. Not to mention those gooey, gory repulsive practical effects.The Fly is a movie you should watch, a movie from an era when the horror genre had real heart and soul.

I've not yet read the short story on which both are based, but the majority of people seem to find this a better film than the 1958 version with Vincent Price in the role of the "interloper". I really like Cronenberg as a filmmaker (most of the time) and I certainly see how his version of the story was more challenging from a technical standpoint, but I don't necessarily agree that it's a better film all the same. The original had a quiet, sad psychological feel and told its story in an extremely economical way. It's what I'd call a very "tight" film and I really enjoyed Price as a nicer fellow and friend trying to figure out, along with the scientist's wife, what the hell was going on. Still, Cronenberg's adaptation is very good and I enjoyed the different emphasis; the way he took notions from the original tale and really made it his own, with the usual Cronenberg emphasis on very bad things happening to the human body.This movie is much more a study of Seth Brundle's character, too. We spend over half the film getting to know him and what he is up to, before his unfortunate accident with a pest and a teleportation machine. He's ably played by jeff Goldblum, whose physicality is very impressive in this demanding role, though I found the actor a little prone to mumbling his dialogue at times. Still, he is supposed to be a socially awkward fellow, so I guess it fits well. The relationship with Gina Davis's reporter character is very effective, and I liked her strong character from teh outset. Unfortunately she does somewhat degenerate and fall to pieces as the story progresses, but I can't really blame her. In contrast to Vincent Price's "nice guy" portrayal in the 1958 film, the "interloper", or I should say, the third part of the triangle, Veronica's newspaper editor, is a loathsome and despicable person who seems to finally do the right things despite himself. My girlfriend and I spent most of the film wishing he would get killed, and I'm sure Cronenberg made him so sleazy and nasty on purpose. It was frustrating and heartbreaking that Veronica kept returning to him and letting him back into her life, but again, I can't really blame her. In a way, too, it illustrates that even in the "enlightened" time this movie was made, a woman's value in work and life was often extremely underappreciated and a lot of very bad sexual politics sometimes took place. This still happens today, but I'm not sure a guy like Stathis would be able to get away with acting like this toward his female colleagues on any major newspaper, even if he were the editor.Anyway, you can see right off why Veronica and Seth value each others' company. He treats her well and is kind and passionate toward her, while she gives him a sympathetic ear and not only has a passion for his body but also the work he is doing, which sets her afire with dreams of fame and glory. Admittedly it's not nice to see her going back to Stathis and basically insisting that she's using Seth, but in Seth's company we see a rather different side to her. Her horror and revolusion by the end of the movie is really sad to see. Unfortunately it also leads to the one moment in this movie that I thought was ridiculous: the aborted um, abortion scene, with the rather transformed Seth bursting through the window and abducting Veronica. Now who in hell has a window like that in an operating room anyway? I'm not squeamish as such, but the entire abortion scene seemed a bit superfluous and maybe just an excuse for Cronenberg to play out some of his gynecological horror fetish, which of course reached its apex in Deadringers (released a couple of years later). I think the dream sequence was sufficient and horrible enough as it was, and anyway, you could argue that the "aborted abortion" scene became the excuse to release this movie's non-Cronenberg-directed bad copycat sequel.Make no mistake though, this film is considered an 80s classic for a reason. I may not rate it as highly as some and I certainly don't think it's as good as some of Cronberg's other, weirder films, but it's still better than some of what he's done lately (the "mature" A History of Violence being possibly his worst film to date) and it's still quite an experience. The horror of the situation really creeps up on you and the first half of the movie includes a lot of sweet scenes that almost lull the viewer into a false sense of security. There's a nice little tribute to the 1958 film near the end and the whole thing becomes gross and revolting in that 70s/80s Cronenberg way you'll either love or hate depending on your personality. I dig it quite a bit; it's one of his very personal touches you can almost always count upon. My only other criticism is that I find the music to be a little dull and too bombastic/mainstream Hollywood, although there were some nice "sad" motifs. I think a sparser, perhaps more electronic-infused score would have suited this thing well. But it's ok! Good film and a must for 80s body horror fans.

The Fly rests its excellence on two pillars : a great performance by Jeff Goldblum and stunning visual effects. The plot is a fairly straight-forward one of a scientific experiment gone terribly wrong, with a very slow reveal of the horrifying consequences. There is very quick ramp-up of the disturbing factor though, so much so that I was almost ready to close my eyes before the very disturbing final scene. While the plot is a bit clichéd, the characters have very distinct personalities and are far from clichéd. All the three main actors give very good performances, aided by a clever script, but Jeff Goldblum's performance is particularly noteworthy as the eccentric scientist. It is notable that during his character's slow transformation into the fly, we see glimpses of fly-like behavior when he is still a normal human being, and then glimpses of the eccentric scientist even when he turns into a full-fledged monster. The special effects are very good (and gory), and there are some horrifying scenes which appear very realistic.

David Cronenberg's The Fly is one of my favourite horror films. It tells a multi-layered human story with believable well-motivated characters. It is set before the introduction of CGI and utilises prosthetic makeup for the creature effects. There is no better effect than that of Jeff Goldblum's acting though. His fast speaking and twitching become utterly convincing as he gets more and more fly-like in his journey. I watched this film again recently and was happily appreciative of how well it holds up today. It has hardly dated at all.