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The Fly (1986)
imdb.com rating: 7.5/10
arrow in the head rating: 8/10
my personal rating: 7/10
The next film I will be critiquing is David Cronenberg's The Fly. The film with the trademark teleporting pods that appear to be steel hives. So the film starts as an unknown research scientist who can teleport non-living objects through his pods. He is in the development stage of testing his pods on living organisms, he first has an unsuccessful experiment with a baboon. Just after this he tries a second experiment with another baboon and this time it does work. I'll come back to this. Seth (Goldblum) has the bravery to invite a stranger to his lab, which conveniently is also his flat where he lives. He soons finds out the attractive woman he invited into his research lab, Veronica (Geena Davis) is actually a writer. So after meeting her again he decides to ask her to his flat and at night he comes up with the plan it's a good time to test a human subject, so he puts himself into a pod to experiment. As Seth hops in the pod you see there's no panic button of any kind in case there is a problem to stop the process, basically you are screwed if someone or something jumps inside with you. The container pod counts down from 2:00 minutes so if a spider, butterfly, bee, dog, cat, or even a fly get stuck in there without an outside operator running the machine you become spliced.
The film has a mix of sci-fi, horror, and love-romance elements to it. I would of preferred a little more sci-fi in the second half of the film, but I guess the studios felt the special effects crew would use this time to showcase their skills. We get to see an adult man fully transform into a half fly-half man hybrid. The score is very good here as it doesn't take away from the film's suspense, it seems like every horror film from the past 10 years needs loud music piped-in every scene to produce a cheap, jump scare. Seth goes mad booming women as soon as he finds out he has unique abilities. There is a solid portion of blood and gore featured; a bloody mess of a baboon, a broken wrist, teeth and an ear falling off, acid cutting a man's hand and foot off, and a fly-human transformation. A con for me is while the audience does get a visual transformation it's only to showcase neat make-up and special effects, I wanted to feel a more realistic, emotional pain. I couldn't get over the fact near the last twenty minutes or so he is transformed into a complete mess, mutant like, and no one thinks to call a doctor or CDC for help? In the very end when Stathis (Getz) is missing a hand and a foot, he seems too functional and pain-free for a person missing limbs. Does anyone feel pain or torture in this film? The final scene has our heroine shoot the creature in its head and seconds later a quick, abrupt flash to credits. I heard there's a sequel out there to this, however I believe I'll pass.
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