inventive but often crass re-make

Rating: 6/10 (18 November 2010)

There's no reason to remake a 30-year-old (minor) horror film unless improvements can be added, but David Cronenberg's grisly update is an imaginative rethinking of the 1958 sci-fi scenario. In the original, a scientist experimenting with teleportation unwittingly swaps heads with a housefly; this time around, when the absent-minded professor (Jeff Goldblum) accidentally mixes molecules with an insect, the alteration is at a genetic level, leading to a gradual physical metamorphosis better suited to the horror film format. Tiny hairs begin sprouting on his back; next he begins to exhibit unusual strength; then he experiences a sudden craving for sugar; and finallywell, suffice to say that viewers with sensitive stomachs are hereby forewarned. Cronenberg earns points for emphasizing the tragedy of Goldblums's predicament, but the nauseating shock effects are strictly for kids. With a little more subtlety the film might have emerged as a classic of its kind.