10 Sci-Fi Movies One Step From Perfection
3. The Fly's Third Wheel Is Never Resolved Properly
We get it, fingertips are bound to start pounding keyboards once anyone suggests that David Cronenberg’s 1986 body horror classic is anything short of flawless. The visionary director’s tragic love story is a bona fide brilliant horror film, and unlike some of the director’s earlier efforts it doesn’t suffer from focusing more on effective gore and gruesome scares than its cast of characters (hello there, Shivers).
Like John Carpenter earlier also extremely effects heavy and also deeply bleak sci-fi horror The Thing, Cronenberg’s fifties sci-fi remake is a rare case of the reimagining improving upon its original in every way, with a career best central performance from Jeff Goldblum adding gravitas to its heart breaking plot.
However the film isn’t entirely without its flaws, and the one which its story never really finds a way to work around is bizarrely named third wheel Stathis Borans. As on-again-off-again love interest to Geena Davis’ Ronnie, Stathis has little to offer the film’s plot beyond embodying Seth’s seething undercurrent of jealousy, and whilst John Getz handles the role admirably, there’s just not much purpose to it.
In such a dark and unremittingly bleak tale there’s little room for spare characters, and poor Borans could have been sent to the cutting floor without much loss.