One of My Favorite Horror Films of All Time

Rating: 10/10 (22 October 2016)

This movie should have two things going against it in my book. First, I can't stand remakes. I can name you probably a handful of remakes in horror that I actually enjoy. To me, if a movie is a classic, there is really no reason to remake it. After all, nobody rewrites great novels. Nobody repaint classic works of art. Why are we, as an audience, so willing to accept a remade movie?
The other thing is that I am not, generally, a fan of the work of Cronenberg. He is an artist. He makes good movies. I won't argue with either of those things from a critical point of view. To make a bad analogy, I understand that there are world famous Italian chefs, but I just don't like Italian food. It's just not my style. In the same way, I never got into Cronenberg. His style of "body horror" is too rooted in geeky sci-fi themes for me. It's too cerebral, at times, and doesn't give me enough absolute brutality.
So, should I like a remake made by a director I don't like? I don't like it. I love it. It's such a fantastic piece of horror cinema and full of poetic moments. A huge part of the success of this movie belongs to Jeff Goldblum, who is just so good in this role. You could say that he was perfect for the role, but you could argue that the role is perfect because of him. His style of "my brain is moving faster than my mouth can keep up" acting brings a charm and intelligence to Seth Brundle that makes him such a likable character and so perfect as a scientist. He evinces that obsession that can make the audience truly believe in why he would push himself into the situation that causes this disaster. Once his experiment is completed and the change begins, that same chaotic style of acting makes him a believable proto-human as well.
The special effects still hold really well for a movie that is 30 years old. I will concede that the final creature creation when he metamorphoses completely into a fly feels a little dated, but on the same token even that design still looks better than most of the crappy CGI I see now. It is the gradual transformation that is done so well. Rather than taking the approach of the original and having him instantly a half-fly creature, Seth slowly disintegrates into the fabric of the fly. Those makeup jobs along the way are really well done and so memorable. That scene where he first throws up in his food and an ear falls off is forever classic, mostly due to how believable the makeup is in that scene.
What pushes the whole thing into classic territory is the poetic tragedy of the entire movie. Like the best tragic villains, Seth is struggling against the evil inside himself the entire way. He wants to maintain his humanity, but is slowly losing his touch with it. Goldblum does such a great job at portraying this that we never see him as a "bad guy". Even when he is scaring the hell out of the other characters, we are still cheering for him to be redeemed. The writing helps this, too. There are lines in this movie, oft quoted, that are just spot on perfect. I mean "I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now the dream is over....and the insect is awake". There are many of these lines that full of such intelligence.
I can't praise this movie enough. It's Cronenberg's best work. It's one of the greatest remakes ever. It's one of the best horror movies of the 80s. Frankly, it's one of the greatest horror films ever.