Review: ‘The Fly’ celebrates 40 years of gross, gooey relationship decay
1986 / Dir. David Cronenberg / 2026 Chicago Critics Film Festival
Rating: 5/5
Watch if you like: what? You haven’t seen The Fly? Go watch it right now!
One of David Cronenberg’s best films and a peak of ‘80s horror, The Fly holds up 40 years later thanks to its gruesome makeup effects, a perfect match-up of Geena and Jeff Goldblum, and a haunting allegory for losing a loved one to aging and disease.
If you haven’t seen The Fly, Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a geeky scientist who convinces science journalist Ronnie (Davis) to come back to his sketchy warehouse loft, where he’s been working on something that will change the world: teleportation. He can successfully transport inorganic items, but when he tries to teleport anything alive, it comes out as a pile of blown-up gore.
Convincing Ronnie not to leak anything about this until he has it all worked out, Seth lets her start documenting his attempts to ultimately transport himself from one of his “telepods” to the other. When he finally does try going through himself, he has an unexpected guest: a fly. While he initially appears to be himself, albeit with a lot of youthful energy, things take a turn when he starts exhibiting more insect-like traits and going through some disgusting physical transformations that won Best Makeup at the 1987 Academy Awards and still look incredible to this day.
Cronenberg packs a lot into 96 minutes, delivering a very entertaining monster movie that never loses sight of the central relationship between Ronnie and Seth and, as the film goes on, Ronnie’s struggles to know how to help her lover that aren’t all that removed from what you’d see in a prestige drama like Michael Haneke’s Amour about an elderly man struggling to take care of his wife after her stroke. That’s why The Fly still stands out as both a commercial and critical peak in Cronenberg’s long film career; I’d be hard-pressed to think of another film full of goopy monster effects that’s legitimately heartbreaking.