The Female Experience of Body Horror in Cronenberg’s The Fly

The 80s horror flick reveals lack of female agency is the true plot twist

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Directed by David Cronenberg, 1986's The Fly is a Science Fiction/Horror film in which a scientist unwittingly becomes the recipient of genetic material from a common house fly. Over the course of the film he evolves into a half-man, half-fly hybrid and loses every bit of the humanity he once possessed.

But while the focus of the film is on its male character, a scientist by the name of Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), it’s the female character (Veronica Quaife, played by Geena Davis) who bears the unintended consequences of the scientist’s experiment when her love life devolves from a healthy and consensual affair, into what could be described as most women’s own personal hell.

Veronica and Seth’s relationship is consensual.

Needless to say, that makes it all the more attractive. Likewise, Seth, the young, smart, awkward guy who fails at flirting but ultimately win overs the fashionable journalist (Jeff Goldblum cleaned up quite nicely in the 80s), is the pillar of desire throughout the first half of the film. At least from a female perspective.