Intelligent and excellent remake of a cult classic

Rating: 9/10 (11 June 2014)

At the time The Fly was made, there was a fashion for remaking 50's sci-fi horror flicks with upgraded special effects and the more adult content that the times allowed. The original Vincent Price movie was from 1958 and is something of a cult classic. It has some camp value certainly but mostly it worked because it had an interesting premise that was executed well. David Cronenberg's remake retained the basic idea but updated it with more complex ideas and, of course, ground-breaking special effects. In a sense, The Fly was the last pure horror film that Cronenberg ever made, despite some of his subsequent movies certainly having elements of the genre. As such it represents the final entry in a truly brilliant series of sci-fi horror feature films that began with Shivers in 1975. It's probably fair to say that The Fly is his most mature work of that sequence, in the sense of his screenplay being strong, with the production values and actors being good enough to carry it off consistently well. But that's not to say it's his best work from the period, I have even more of a fondness for his rougher earlier films and would arguably consider Videodrome to be his master-work. But this is all relative really, as The Fly remains a fantastic work and one of the very best horror or sci-fi films from the 80's.
The story focuses for the most part on a research scientist called Seth Brundle and science magazine reporter. He is a reclusive intellectual who has developed telepods which can transport matter through space, while she wishes to report on it. They form a relationship which complicates matters resulting in Brundle deciding to go through his teleportation device himself one night. Unfortunately for him he unknowingly is sharing the telepod with an ordinary harmless house fly
In these days of ten-a-penny remakes and reboots, it is especially refreshing to look back on a new version of an old film that updated it in ways that made it seem necessary that it was remade. Cronenberg had shown in his previous horror films that he was a director full of original thought, so it's not really surprising that he took the ingredients from the original movie and remodelled them into one of his unique body-horror flicks. The old movie was essentially a creature feature with a difference, in that the monster was not a marauding menace but a tragic being. In this way it recalled Frankenstein, with its sympathetic monster but with the added angle that the scientist responsible becomes the monster/victim himself. Cronenberg retains this idea but has the scientist fuse with the fly at a molecular, genetic level; meaning that a new creature entirely, emerges. In this way Brundle's metamorphosis into the Brundlefly is more gradual beginning with small things such as excessive sugar intake, moving on to extreme strength and resulting in physical transformation. The effects work here is exemplary and Oscar winning; in fact, the man responsible Chris Walas was given director duties for the very decent sequel, The Fly II.
What really separates this film with Cronenberg's earlier ones is that it's emotionally resonant with sympathetic characters. Its plot boils down to an unorthodox love story of sorts. The way in which it has such a strong and realistic emotional undercurrent without sacrificing any of the gruesome and imaginative sci-fi horror aspects is what makes it so successful and relatively unusual in the genre. It's helped rather a lot by the acting contributions of Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis who both put in strong performances; Goldblum in particular has never been better than here. Ultimately, The Fly remains a definitive example of how to intelligently remake a beloved old movie – keep it the same, while making it different – it's a lot harder than it seems!