***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***
Like father, like son.
So I wasn't sure what to expect this time around and I couldn't have been happier when the end credits finally came about. This film goes from bad to worse. It is filled with improbable situations, unrealistic story lines, hokey and unconvincing science and so much bad acting you would think that no one here had ever acted before.
The story begins with Geena Davis's character giving birth to her child she wanted to rid of in The Fly. Only it's not Geena Davis, it's some other actress who kind of looks like her. She gives birth to
a weird fly like cocoon that has a human baby inside. She dies and the baby becomes property of Bartok industries, a company that apparently employed Jeff Goldblum's character from The Fly. Only, in The Fly, Goldblum makes it clear that he is only funded by them but is working for himself.
The child is raised in isolation by the evil Bartok company and at age 5 is fully grown. He learns of his dad, and decides to continue with his work. It is at this point that he meets a girl, falls in love and starts to turn into a fly.
So where did this film go wrong? Everywhere!!! It's boring, it's stupid and it doesn't make a lick of sense. Why when they teleport the dog does it come out all mutated if it didn't cross breed with another animal or insect? Why does Stathis Borans (the only returning character from the previous film) help Martin (the son of the fly) if he hates his dad, was deformed by his dad and says so explicitly? Why does Martin, when he combines his DNA with another's, come out fully human after already having turned into a fly and why is he connected to the mutant and need to be dug out (see the final scene of the movie if this sounds confusing)?
Ok, let's forget about the bad science and the stupid logic in the film. What else makes this film so bad? Well coming off David Cronenberg's The Fly, not to mention the earlier series from the 50's and 60's, this film just pales in comparison. The effects are worse than those in Cronenberg's film. The teleporting doesn't look as good, the monster doesn't look as real, the make up is less convincing. You would think a film made three years after another would look better than its predecessor, especially since the first one was a huge hit, but alas there is no luck here.
It's not just the special effects that are lacking. The cinematography is bland and boring with generic lighting and static and plain shots. There is nothing that pleases the eye in the look of this film. Nothing expect for a little bit of gore. The head crushing by the elevator, although senseless, does look good. The editing is ho hum, overlong and badly matched. At 104 minutes, The Fly II
is way, way, way, way to long.
Then we have the acting, which other than John Getz who plays Stathis, is piss poor. I always liked Eric Stoltz and hoped he had a bigger career than he actually did, but watching this movie, with him in the lead, I can see why he never made it that far. (To be fair he is a much better actor than what is seen in this dreck but still.) With every new actor that appears, the acting gets worse and worse, Getz not included.
This isn't helped by the utterly terrible use of 80's costumes and design. The Fly II is so blatantly 80's it makes me want to puke. What an ugly era of dress and make-up, an era so ugly it ends up hampering certain movies from that period such as this one. Cronenberg's The Fly was made in the 80's but it has a timelessness to it and doesn't look or feel as horrifyingly 80's as this film. In fact, the costumes and make-up end up being the scariest thing abut this film.
I can go on about everything else that is bad about this film but to be honest I just want to forget about it. This is one sad way to end the fly saga of films. I had expected better than this (and had expected Curse of the Fly to be as bad as this was) but instead I got a film that started off bad and only got worse. By the time Martin turns into the fly and the climax is a foot I was so bored I couldn't care less and couldn't wait for the end to come and that still felt like it was hours away. I honestly can't recommend this film to anyone unless you are a 13 year old kid or you are, like me, watching all the Fly movies in a row.
Stay Away. Stay Very Very Far Away.
Film Rating: 31%
Breakdown (How The Fly II scored 31%):
Production Design: 5 out of 10
Cinematography: 3 out of 10
Re-playability: 1 out of 10
Originality: 1 out of 10
Costumes: 4 out of 10
Directing: 2 out of 10
Editing: 4 out of 10
Acting: 4 out of 10
Music: 6 out of 10
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