The Fly II is an abjectly disgusting movie. I am writing this whilst eating my breakfast and I instantly regret doing that, because I’m having to remember everything I found gross about the film and still try and stomach my cereal. The Fly II is a film that you should watch only after you have squared away your evening meal a few hours prior.
I watched the film, sequel to 1986’s The Fly, a few days after watching the original. It was the first time I had watched the film and it will likely be the last. There are a handful of reasons for that. The first is just the general unrestrained grossness of it all, the second is because the acting of every character makes Geena Davis’ woodenness from the first film seem positively Oscar-worthy, and the third is because I’d seen half of the story before. You’re probably thinking “what do you mean you’ve seen half of it before? You just said you’d never watched it!” Well, if you’ve seen this film before you’ll know exactly what I mean, and if you haven’t, dear reader, well let me explain.
First of all, though, some background details. Like I mentioned before, The Fly II is a sequel to the original. I know, whoddathunkit with a title like that? Only one actor from the original film returns, however, and that is John Getz, who played walking piece of human garbage Stathis Borans in the first film. Jeff Goldblum is also in it through the magic of archival footage, but not credited. I can only assume he is glad to not have his name attached to the film. Geena Davis was actually interested in reprising her role, but turned it down in the end because Veronica dies five minutes into the film. The film was directed by Chris Walas, who, interestingly enough, did the stomach-churning special effects make-up on the original film.
So, now we know the nuts and bolts, on to the story. I mentioned that I’d already seen it before. If you’ve seen the original film, you’ve seen most of The Fly II’s story as well. That’s because the film follows all of the main plot beats of the original – man works on teleportation device, man’s experiments in teleportation go wrong, man falls in love with a woman, man mutates into a fly and goes on a murderous rampage. So far, so boring. The only spice they added to this blandest of story stews is this time around, the man is already carrying the fly mutation! Yep, that sure warrants a whole other film!
I mentioned how bad the acting was as well, and wow, is it something. Eric Stoltz, who plays main character Martin Brundle (Seth Brundle’s fly-baby), does his best. He’s not great, but he does a better job than literally every other cast member, especially Daphne Zuniga, who plays Martin’s love interest Beth. Every scene she is in is just completely sapped of any emotion, and it’s hard to believe her character even has a love story at all when every time Beth interacts with Martin it’s like she’s talking to someone she met for the first time on the bus. The main point of the film is about what happens to the characters, so it’s a shame that the characters in this film are just boring. Sure, The Fly suffered from a similar lack of interesting people to follow, but that film had Seth Brundle, who made up for the dullness of everyone else around him by being so incredibly off-the-wall that it didn’t matter that everyone else appeared to be just switching places with a cardboard cut-out every now and then.
Finally, we get to the worst bit of all, which is just the all-out revoltingness of the film. Every five minutes there’s some sort of horrible lab incident, or something bursting out of a larval sac, or someone getting fly vomit spewed onto them. The first film was icky too, but this just seems gratuitous. It doesn’t help that the special effects are nowhere near as good as in the first film, even though the man who did those effects is literally directing this time around. When Martin’s story reaches its inevitable conclusion and he mutates into the titular Fly Monstrosity, he ends up looking less like insect-like and more like a very angry mogwai that someone has unsuspectingly fed after midnight.
Oh, and I suppose I should mention the ending. It’s not a good ending by any stretch of the imagination. No characters learn any lessons (in fact, Martin just straight up goes against all of his established characterisation thus far). Unlike the first film, which warned the audience of the dangers of arrogance and jealousy, presenting us with a horrifying alternative to the Icarus story, there’s no real message this time around. I suppose you could say the film tries to warn us that experimenting without empathy is cruel and will only lead to negative results, but there’s not enough nuance in the story or characters to really make that message clear. The film is essentially another of those sci-fi efforts that boil down to Science Is Scary And We Should Be Scared Of It, something which I’ve always thought is not only cliché but limiting.
And that’s The Fly II. It’s another of those sequels slapped with the dreaded label of “simply doesn’t need to exist”. Look, I just didn’t enjoy this film at all, and I’m struggling to come up with any redeemable features I can encourage you to watch it for. I suppose the only situation that might compel you to watch it is if you are like me, a fan of the first film and curious about the sequel. In that case, watch it, but definitely keep your expectations low and don’t watch it with dinner. You’ll definitely thank me for that last piece of advice.
BEST BITS
– The 30 seconds that Jeff Goldblum was in it.
WORST BITS
– The 1 hour, 44 mins and 30 seconds that Jeff Goldblum was not in it.
FINAL RATING: 3/10.
