13 Days of First-Time Frights: The Fly

13 Days of First-Time Frights is a series of reviews for October 2019 where Douglas Laman, in the spirit of Halloween, watches and writes about thirteen horror movies he's never seen before. These reviews will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday as well as the last three Wednesdays of October 2019.

Entry #4: The Fly

Scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is working on something quite impressive. It's not something he's willing to share with just anyone, but he does end up bringing reporter Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) back to his workspace to check out what he's managed to create. Turns out, Brundle has created a revolutionary teleportation device in the form of two telepods. It's still in need of tweaks so that it can properly transport human tissue but it's already transporting clothes from one place to the next without issue, surely humans can't be far behind. Veronica Quaife begins to chronicle Brundle's trial and error exercises in getting this machine to work properly and in the process the two of them being to fall in love.


The romance between Seth and Veronica is not an aspect of David Cronenberg's The Fly I was prepared to play so prominently into the proceedings. In fact, it's such a crucial fixture in the plot that one could classify The Fly as a doomed romance tale in the vein of Titanic or Romeo & Juliet. The "doomed" part of the doomed romance moniker emerges in The Fly once Seth Brundle, in a fit of romantic jealousy over Veronica going to meet her ex-boyfriend, decides to do an impromptu test of his telepods. He manages to come out seemingly unscathed but unknown to Brundle, a fly was trapped in the telepod when he did his teleportation test. Now the fly and Seth are one and it's turning Seth less and less human by the day.

Before we get to that point, though, The Fly makes a profound point to emphasize the romance between Seth and Veronica in the first act through a number of quiet character-driven scenes. This portion of the story has a greater level of purpose to it than merely showing off the unique sort of engaging chemistry shared between Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. These scenes help ensure that the subsequent sequences dedicated to chronicling Seth's transformation into some kind of human/fly hybrid monster have real emotional weight to them. Brundle in his various human/fly forms across the running time doesn't just render the character a generic version of a slasher movie villain.

Instead, there's real gravity in the depiction of him being terrified of what he's becoming as well as how Veronica reacts to the person she loves gradually losing their humanity. No matter how wild and crazy the premise gets (and it does get delightfully kooky), the romance between the two lead characters ensures that there's palpable humanity coursing through the veins of this insect-oriented horror feature. Even more memorable than the relationship between the two lead characters of The Fly, though, are its depictions of body horror, a slice of horror cinema that writer/director David Cronenberg is pretty much considered the reigning champion of.

With The Fly, Cronenberg gets to revel in all kinds of nasty instances of body horror in terms of depicting Seth Brundle slowly but surely turning into a human/fly beastie. Prepare to have your stomach churned through moments like one darkly humorous bit where Seth films himself vomiting up corrosive enzymes to help him eat as part of a warped vision of educational children's television programming. Such moments get enhanced by a barrage of masterful practical effects used for Seth's assorted human/fly forms. Especially impressive is whatever camerawork trickery is used to make it look like one version of Seth is walking on the ceiling, it looks just as absolutely convincing in 2019 as it did in 1986.

The makeup effects used for the various stages if Seth's transformation are similarly outstanding to look at, especially in how unnerving they are on a visual level. Seth's human/fly forms, especially the later ones, always looks so warped, so repugnant, like they're barely holding together. His visual appearance is eerie to look at and suggests the idea that this being should not be. It's an aberration whose very body looks like it's fighting against existing. All of this creepy extensive makeup work is wonderfully paired up with Jeff Goldblum's terrific lead performance. Goldblum does a great job working within all this makeup to constantly communicate traces of Seth Brundle's original personality while also chillingly showing how far removed he is from his humanity. I certainly won't be forgetting Goldblum's performance in The Fly anytime soon nor will I forget the acid vomitting, that's also gonna be stuck in my head for a while.