David Cronenberg directs Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz in this tale of a scientist who gets spliced with fly.

Jeff Goldblum fires in with one of genre cinema’s finest performances. His speech and body language faultlessly goes from acerbically precise to the sugar rush burble of a man losing his humanity to the fly inside. The effect works is gorily solid, the smart design and lighting sell even the less than believable gunk. It all boils down to a taut three hander as much about AIDS, jealousy and the weakness of an ageing body as the teleportation science fiction on the surface. You are gripped as it is convincingly told in measured surges of humour, romance, drama, terror and cold observation. Neatly small scale with an abundance of expected sick imagination, this is easily Cronenberg’s most accessible work.

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