Maybe Cronenberg's best, definitely his most accessible

Rating: 10/10 (7 July 2005)

David Cronenberg is a master of technological horror and always manages to create films chock full of interesting ideas. The problem (or really cool thing ) about some of his films however, is that he lets his ideas overwhelm the story. His films become more like puzzles than straight forward pictures, and often require the viewer to sit back and decipher what they just saw. While The Fly still explores Cronenberg's characteristic theme of the transformation of the human body, it does so in a way that never overwhelms the story. The film remains at its core a tragic love story, aided greatly by Jeff Goldblum's very human performance. The emotion here doesn't seem forced or artificial like some of his other movies (Scanners, Dead Ringers), but actually comes across as sincere. For a director so consistently concerned with artificial human manipulation, Cronenberg has managed to create a film that is surprisingly genuine; supplying this film with a good dose of what many of his others lack: humanity.