AndrewBloom
CONTAINS SPOILERS6/10 3 years ago
[6.0/10] I knew *The Fly* would be gross. If you know nothing else about the oeuvre of David Cronenberg, you know his penchant for body horror. His 1986 classic does not disappoint on that front. Characters vomit up white goo. Their fingers pop like pustules. They skin sloughs off revealing forms and figures each more disturbing than the last.
And weirdly, it’s the best part of the film.
Don’t get me wrong, all of the goopy viscera is hard to stomach in places. I made the rookie mistake of eating dinner during this movie, and thank heaven I finished most of it before anything truly disgusting happened. (Outside of that poor inside out baboon.)
But it’s the most singular part of the movie. Separate and apart from the plot, Cronenberg’s effects team brings out the ickiness of overzealous scientist Seth Brundle’s unpleasant transformation. A nightmare sequence of a grisly larvae birth, or Brundle done up as a lumpy Frankenstein’s monster, or his final form emerging twisted from the telepod begging for death all turn the stomach with a force and horror that subsists on the imagery alone, with next to no need for the narrative.
I doubt this was the intention, but in a weird way, *The Fly* feels like a deconstruction of the Spider-Man mythos. The source material and various adaptations have gone for similar body horror vibes at times (see: Man-Spider). But Cronenerg’s grim fable seems like a darker take on the “man receives the powers and molecular structure of a creepy crawly” premise. The unfortunate changes in personality and horribly corporeal shifts seem like a dark-edged twist on the teenage power fantasy.
That transformation might not work without the talents of Jeff Goldblum. The few characters in the movie tend to be some combination of wildly overblown or totally inconsistent throughout the movie. But Goldblum breathes life into Brundle in his various forms: awkward but sympathetic nerd, screw-loose science experiment, terrifying creature of the night, and poetic keeper of clarity in choice moments from within the beast. He mutters and spasms and gives himself over to tics and contortions that make Brundle and his insectoid alter ego seem vivid, in a film where little feels real.
He’s also the chief source of the film’s black comedy. Don’t get me wrong, *The Fly* isn’t an especially funny movie. But there’s moments where Brundle seems almost bemused at his own predicament, or remarks on a medicine cabinet full of scraps of his own fallen body parts as a “natural history museum,” that you can’t help but share a dark chuckle amid such macabre yet wryly amusing shtick.
The strange thing is that *The Fly* is less a comedy, or even a straight horror movie, than it is a bizarre relationship film. There’s shades of *King Kong*, *Beauty and the Beast*, and other My Monster Boyfriend:tm: tropes here. But the key focus of the film isn’t so much on Brundle’s peculiar metamorphosis as it is the love triangle between him; Ronnie, a reporter covering his story who falls in love with him; and Stathis, her possessive, stalker of an ex who also happens to be her editor.
The key problem is that no thread of the romantic entanglements works. The closest is Brundle and Ronnie. Golbum and co-star Geena Davis were a real life item at the time, and in some moments, you can see their ease and chemistry with one another. But for much of the movie, it seems like they fall in love by fiat, with a few cute interactions turning into some sort of undying love and devotion practically out of nowhere.
Nevermind the fact that the characters change personalities so much that it’s hard to pin down how they relate to one another in any given moment. At least Brundle has a built-in excuse, as his fly-boy evolution sort of accounts for his transition from presumptuous if insecure geek, to grade-A jerk, to ravenous monster, to self-aware warrior poet. There’s not a great throughline from one to the other, but it can, generously, be chalked up to the vicissitudes of his unprecedented transformation.
But Ronnie goes from being a self-possessed, almost mercenary reporter, to being a lovestruck kitten, to being a concerned spouse, to being the cliched hysterical monster kidnapping victim.
And lord knows what the hell the movie wants us to think of Stathis, who starts out the movie as a standard 1980s douchebag. He invades Ronnie’s personal space, sexually harasses her, and plays the jealous and controlling ex through the first half of the movie. But somewhere in the middle, he becomes a hero? Or is maybe supposed to be? He still barges into Ronnie’s living space without asking and makes demands of her. But he also looks after her in a difficult time and bravely defends her when Brundle has gone full-blown monster mash.
Part of me wants to call *The Fly* a study in toxic masculinity. Stathis is practically a cartoon poster boy for it with his over-the-top scumbaggery. And Brundle’s shift from friendly, anxious dork next door to insistent and overriding jerk could be a commentary on what would eventually become the “Nice Guy” cultural trope. But who the audience is supposed to sympathize with from scene to scene, and who we’re supposed to recoil from turns on a dime, to where it’s hard to be sure what, if anything, the movie’s trying to say about these bumpy relationships.
The best you can say is that, for all her character inconsistencies, the movie takes Ronnie’s plight and pregnancy seriously. There’s a frank and graphic take on abortion, with examinations of pressure and limited choices and rationales that seems stunningly candid even decades later. At some point, Ronnie seems more like Brundle’s emotional support animal than a full-fledged person, but like with every major player in this film, there’s intermittent stretches when the script has something interesting and pathos-ridden for her to do.
The truth is that, despite all that messy plot and jumbled character dynamics, *The Fly* is mainly an excuse for the viscera-soaked fireworks. Goldblum’s unique performance livens and deepens a role that could have simply been “prosthetics-wearer-in-chief” in lesser hands. But those make-up team marvels, puppeteered pustules, and sickening practical effects are the only reason to stop by the lab here. They’re where Cronenberg and his team truly excel, and practically everything else in the film feels like an intriguing, but ultimately failed experiment.
