David Cronenberg’s The Fly is the rarest kind of horror film—it’s disgusting, it’s tragic, and it’s tender enough to make you genuinely sad about a man who throws up on his food before eating it. Released in 1986, it’s both a goo-drenched monster movie and a warped romantic tragedy, a remake that out-mutates the original in every way. This thing isn’t just a creature feature—it’s a masterclass in slow-burn dread, the cinematic equivalent of watching your spouse turn into a cockroach while you try not to scream into your morning coffee.
And at the center of it all—well, sort of—is Geena Davis, playing investigative journalist Veronica Quaife, a woman with great hair, better instincts, and one hell of a bad taste in men. She walks into Seth Brundle’s warehouse/lab/doom chamber and never walks out emotionally intact. Davis is magnetic, clever, expressive—but strangely sidelined by the script, which slowly turns her from protagonist to horrified bystander as her boyfriend morphs into an industrial-strength housefly with a PhD.
And yes, we’ll talk about that later. But for now, let’s praise the pus.’
Jeff Goldblum, in a role that should’ve won him an Oscar (or at least a Nobel Prize in Charisma), plays Seth Brundle—a twitchy, brilliant, babbling scientist who invents a teleportation machine that can move objects across space but not, unfortunately, prevent them from merging with the DNA of insects. One late-night experiment involving a pod, some drunken ego, and an uninvited fly ends with Seth slowly transforming into a hybrid creature the makeup department probably had to invent new fluids to create.
Goldblum’s performance is jaw-dropping. He starts out charming, eccentric, full of awkward intellectual swagger—the kind of guy who arrives to a first date in a lab coat. But as the transformation begins, his body deteriorates in stages: teeth fall out, fingernails pop off, his posture hunches, and eventually he’s crawling on walls and barfing digestive enzymes like it’s a party trick. And yet, somehow, through all the slime and horror, Goldblum maintains the tragedy. Brundle doesn’t become evil. He becomes ill—and that’s what makes The Fly hit so hard. It’s not a monster movie. It’s a cancer movie in bug prosthetics.
Cronenberg—never one to shy away from a good existential breakdown—crafts the film like a grotesque metaphor for decay, disease, and the failure of the human body. AIDS, aging, terminal illness—it’s all there, squirming under the latex. The body horror is incredible, of course. Limbs fall off like dead branches. Skin peels like expired paint. There’s a moment where Brundle stores his discarded body parts in a medicine cabinet shrine that’s so perfectly bleak it should be studied in film school and medical school.
But what holds the whole thing together—besides the mucus—is the romance. Davis and Goldblum have real chemistry, likely helped by the fact that they were dating at the time. Veronica’s relationship with Brundle feels genuine, full of curiosity, passion, and increasing dread. Her arc should be center-stage, but the film keeps dragging her to the sidelines every time Seth needs to vomit on another doughnut. Still, Davis sells every beat, especially the final act, where she’s left sobbing in front of the deformed, shrieking remains of the man she once loved. It’s not just a horror climax—it’s emotional euthanasia.
Let’s pause here to appreciate Geena Davis. Always cool, always sharp, always vaguely like she could solve a murder while applying lipstick. In The Fly, she’s great—intuitive, terrified, grounded in a role that gives her just enough to work with before pushing her aside in favor of more mutant skin eruptions. What happened to her? She crushed the late ’80s and early ’90s (Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own), and then Hollywood did what it always does to women who hit 40: shuffled her offstage like an aging magician’s assistant. A damn shame, because few actresses could hold the emotional weight of a movie where your boyfriend turns into an insect and tries to fuse you with your unborn baby in a DIY teleportation abortion. Try pulling that off with dignity. Davis does.
And yes, The Fly is every bit as gross as you remember—or worse, if your stomach’s gotten softer over the years. The effects by Chris Walas are legendary, practical, and lovingly revolting. You can practically smell the scenes. The slime. The bile. The endless, stringy goo. By the time Brundle reaches his final form—part insect, part man, part Cronenberg’s wet dream—you’re caught somewhere between wanting to vomit and wanting to cry.
The ending is a gut punch. There’s no escape, no cure, no last-minute salvation. Brundle begs for death, what’s left of his human brain barely intact inside the husk of a thing that used to wear suits and crack nervous jokes. Veronica obliges with a shotgun to the head. It’s mercy killing, yes—but also the film’s final note of intimacy. No screaming. No roar. Just a silent moment of release.
Cronenberg directs all of this with surgical precision. Gone is the narrative fog of Videodrome or Scanners. The Fly is tight, streamlined, and emotionally coherent—even as it spirals into madness. It’s one of his most accessible films, which is hilarious considering it features at least three scenes where someone’s face drips off like microwaved fondue.
Final Thoughts:
The Fly is Cronenberg’s most polished horror film, a near-perfect blend of gooey body horror and Shakespearean tragedy. It’s a love story about falling apart—literally. It’s Beauty and the Beast, if the Beast started vomiting acid and fell off the bed in chunks. Goldblum isn’t anyone’s favorite but he’s perfect in this role. Davis deserved more screen time—and more roles like this. The effects hold up, the themes hit harder now than ever, and the movie sticks with you like the aftertaste of a bad medical diagnosis.
