The Fly (1986) - What's the Real Horror?

Left dissatisfied with Bite (2015), I was directed to Cronenberg’s The Fly. This is one of the movies where I cannot think of a lot to write, because I am sure that everyone has read it before.

The premise, for those my age discovering the wide world of 80s iconic horror: Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is a scientist developing teleportation. Unknown to him, a fly gets into his machine, and their DNA is merged.

And with a cast including Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, of course this movie is well acted. With Chris Walas – known for his work on Gremlins and Arachnophobia – and Stephan Dupuis – known for The Last Crusade and 300 – of course the make-up and the effects are wonderful. Of course Brundlefly is horrifying to watch all the way up to the reveal of the creature itself. The effects are body horror at its finest – the kind that have you unable to look at the screen and unable to turn away from it at the same time.

I’m a big fan of puppetry. Even when you know it’s a puppet, at least you believe it’s there. CGI just doesn’t age like it – the more it advances the worst looking the early stuff gets. No matter how limited a puppet’s movement is, your brain doesn't try to disprove it in the same way it does with CGI. We know these things aren’t alive, so why not at least let the audience believe the actors are on set with it? All this to justify my saying I believe the effects hold up and ask why the common assumption is that CG is always better than traditional?

The development of the plot is also sound – we believe the developing relationship between Brundle and Ronnie. The relationship is the core of the movie and adds the heart that horror films so often forget. That’s our investment in the events. Ronnie is our lens – we share in her pity for Brundle and in her fear/disgust. That’s what makes the movie a classic so many years later – the emotion it stirs up.

And Ronnie’s nightmare is just as strong. It brings out every underlying fear of pregnancy in a hitting, stomach-churning scene. Child birth no doubt brings fear to all woman, if not men too, and this unlikely scenario taps into that.

Maybe the horror that goes unaddressed is the horror of a woman not being able to get an abortion. (Although it is the middle of the night when she asks which might be why the doctor is weary.) In the end, there’s something that doesn’t sit well with the implication that she should carry it to terms for Brundle’s sake, despite her very real concerns about the baby’s DNA make-up. The idea of keeping his humanity alive through the baby is a poetic one. One that doesn’t have to live with the consequences. (And Brundle isn’t the one who has to raise it.) A man changing a woman’s mind on a decision that haunts Ronnie in the sequel is uncomfortable.

No, it should not be Brundle’s decision, but Ronnie’s.

Maybe that's too 'SJW' or Feminist for some people, but media deserves to be looked at under a critical eye. The horror genre all the more, because it gives us the power to fear certain situations, certain things, certain people. This did not affect my enjoyment of the film. If anything, the thought ‘the real horror of The Fly is not getting an abortion when you want one’ seemed like a good thing to tweet and leave it at that.

This is a film that has been waxed lyrical over before, for good reason, and I felt I couldn’t do more than wax lyrical about it some more. So I thought at least I would add something that serves as food for thought. (Just don’t regurgitate all over it.)

Overall, the film had a good crew all round and made every part of the movie delightfully disgusting.