Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Fly
1986 · David Cronenberg · The Fly on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice the cold light on the telepods against the warm lab. (light)
Irwin lights the pods cold and otherworldly while the lab stays warm and cluttered around them.
Payoff: The restraint keeps horror inside the body, not in camera tricks.
Listen to Howard Shore's score swell like grand opera, not horror stings. (sound)
Shore writes surging romantic-tragic orchestral music instead of scoring the film as horror.
Payoff: The music tells you this is a tragedy about love, not a creature feature.
Watch Goldblum's face for small flickers of charm breaking through change. (performance)
Goldblum charts a full arc from charming eccentric to monstrous, but recognizable humor and charm keep surfacing.
Payoff: You keep loving the man inside the transformation, which is the source of the film's grief.
Notice how rarely the film leaves Brundle's brick loft. (staging)
Nearly the whole story stays in Brundle's loft, laboratory, bedroom, and eventually prison in one.
Payoff: The shrinking world outside mirrors Brundle's narrowing existence as the disease consumes him.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the loft narrow around Brundle. Cronenberg is timing a disease, not a monster.