The Fly

I've enjoyed my fair share of weird movies, but I only recently watched The Fly, and I've got to say that is the most fucked movie I have ever seen. Even though its from 86', it really doesn't seem that dated, which surprised me. I was surprised that it didn't just seem kind of goofy with bad effects, but it actually really got me, and I was so shocked afterwards it has since been the only movie ever that, when it ended, I was sweating. I caught myself a few times with my mouth just hanging open. I can't say whether or not I liked it, but I definitely appreciate it and the effect it had on me; I've never seen a movie, except for The Grudge, that had such an impact on me, and even with The Grudge the only prolonging repercussion from that movie was that I couldn't sleep on or look under my cover for a while, and I couldn't be in stairwells alone, you know, because of those scenes. However, if I wasn't in my bed or in a stairwell alone, I didn't think about it and it wasn't a problem. The issue with The Fly, is that even when I'm just walking around town or something is, if I'm thinking about it, I worry about it becoming a pseudo King-Kong Situation where this "185-pound fly" is going to escape and terrorize masses of people and somehow make its way onto my middle-of-nowhere, in the mountains college campus and we'll be stuck with it and no one will save us. I've thought about that extensively. The Fly was so disturbing that I wouldn't necessarily make the decision to ever watch it again by myself, but I was damn intrigued and fascinated and I'm super glad I watched it.

Like I said, I can't say whether or not I liked The Fly, but I think it would be more accurate to say that this is a really good movie. While I didn't necessarily enjoy the movie, and I wasn't really rooting for any of the characters, the effect it had on me and how I felt afterwards means that The Fly achieved a larger connection between the viewer and the movie than a significant amount of other horror movies. Other horror movies have scared me when they were supposed to through jump scares and loud noises, but The Fly creeped me out the whole way through. Also, knowing my preference, I would choose a gross, gory movie, like Saw, over a creepy-ass movie that relies on shit popping out at you, like The Grudge.

I didn't have a problem with most of the content in The Fly. I was obviously impressed with the makeup because I didn't find it cheap or dated. That didn't really surprise me though, most of the awards The Fly was nominated for was for makeup. I was surprised, however, at how gross Jeff Goldblum's transformation was and how the end was the only part that was gory, where Goldblum's character uses his fly "powers" to hurt someone. But watching his body fall apart and deteriorate is really gross; the movie shows, in detail, him pulling his nails off and his teeth falling out and to say the least, it's very unpleasant but very impressive.
I never thought the movie was going to turn in the way it did. On IMDb, the genres listed for The Fly are: horror, romance, and sci-fi. After watching it, I still wouldn't consider it romance because even the Fast & Furious franchise has relationships in them and they aren't considered romance, but anyway, the direction the movie turns in is Geena Davis, the woman Jeff Goldblum gets involved with, becomes pregnant and she doesn't know if it's going to be a fly-baby or not, so after she finds out she's pregnant, it becomes more about that and less about the fact that Jeff Goldblum is devolving into a man-fly, and I would have had a problem with that but the pregnancy plot-line was unexpectedly interesting. I was expecting The Fly would end like King Kong, where he would get out into the public and the government would come after him so on and so forth. So the pregnancy line was original and I still got to see Jeff Goldblum corrosive-vomit on a dude, so that was cool.
The only scene I had a total problem with was a scene, that turned out to be a dream, where Geena Davis goes to get an abortion and they literally pull out this two foot long larva from her. I had to stop the movie and gather myself after that scene because, as a woman, it disgusted me to the deepest part of my soul. Personally, I thought that scene was overkill and unnecessary and I could have gone my whole life without seeing it.
The main part of the plot that I had a problem with was the fact that Geena Davis' rape-y stalker ex boyfriend actually ends up being the good guy and saving the day. The movie sets up the audience to not like this guy, her boss, after he goes into her house and is in her shower when she gets home, and when she asks for her key back he refuses to give it to her and she just does nothing about it. He also threatens to expose Jeff Goldblum's experiments if she doesn't cooperate with him. But in the end, when Geena Davis figures out she's pregnant, she goes to the creepy ex and he basically ends up taking care of her. In the final confrontation, the "Brundle-fly" vomits off the creepy ex's hand and foot so that was pretty satisfying, but then he saves Genna Davis' life and it's totally cheap; he shouldn't be given the opportunity to be the good guy, it's bullshit.

I found The Fly so interesting and it was so unexpected. I liked what started out as some tolerable bodily deterioration, but eventually it got a bit too much. Just like I was fine with Jeff Goldblum kind of acting like a dick because, I mean, c'mon he was turning into a fly, but eventually, his character development just became a bit too hard to watch, especially when he makes his final decision at the end. So no, I wouldn't watch this movie again alone, but I would 100% watch it with someone else/other people so that I could watch them watch it.