Horror Film Review: The Fly (dir. by David Cronenberg)

Posted on October 29, 2026 by Arleigh

“I’m saying… I’m saying I – I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake.” – Seth Brundle

There’s a cruel little stretch in David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) when its central experiment seems to have worked out beautifully. Seth Brundle feels stronger, his confidence skyrockets, and the future looks wide open. Of course, we know better. The movie’s title alone tells us this isn’t heading anywhere pleasant. What makes the film so effective is how badly it makes us want to be wrong. Beneath the slime, broken flesh, and increasingly alarming eating habits is a romance worth caring about. Cronenberg gets us invested in a life just before showing us how horribly it can unravel.

A remake of the 1958 film of the same name, The Fly also draws from the original 1957 short story by French-British writer George Langelaan. Cronenberg takes considerable liberties with the plot, but his film really leans into the story’s darker themes and tone. Scientific curiosity leads to bodily catastrophe, and love becomes inseparable from the suffering it cannot prevent. Those ideas give the remake something substantial to build on. Cronenberg then adds his own fascination with unstable flesh and the loss of bodily control, creating a version that feels less like a retelling than a deeply personal reinvention.

For me, that combination makes it levels better than the original. The 1958 film remains an entertaining science-fiction nightmare, but Cronenberg makes the premise more emotionally involving by changing how the disaster unfolds. Instead of making the scientist’s altered appearance the central revelation, he turns transformation into a drawn-out process. We watch the damage develop alongside the characters, who keep trying to understand it, explain it, and bargain with it. The suspense isn’t simply about what Seth will look like next. It’s about how much of his old life will remain when the next change arrives.

Jeff Goldblum plays Seth as a brilliant scientist whose social skills haven’t quite caught up with his intellect. When journalist Veronica Quaife, played by Geena Davis, becomes interested in his teleportation research, their professional connection develops into something warmer. The attraction gives Seth’s otherwise isolated existence a welcome sense of possibility. Unfortunately, jealousy and alcohol eventually push him into testing the machine on himself. An unnoticed housefly enters the pod with him, and the resulting genetic fusion begins rewriting his body. His breakthrough works, just not in any way he intended.

Goldblum is terrific because he makes Seth’s awkwardness appealing without sanding down his less attractive qualities. His strange rhythms and sudden bursts of enthusiasm suggest someone who spends most of his time following thoughts other people haven’t caught up with. You can see why Veronica would find him fascinating, but you can also see the arrogance underneath his excitement. Once the transformation begins, Goldblum doesn’t abandon that characterization. He twists it. Curiosity becomes fixation, confidence becomes aggression, and Seth’s desire to share his discovery becomes a demand that someone else validate it.

Davis makes Veronica much more than the person standing nearby when the next horrible thing happens. She gives the relationship an emotional credibility that the entire movie depends on. Her affection for Seth feels genuine, as does her growing uncertainty about staying close to him. The film never pretends those feelings are mutually exclusive. She can love him and fear him, want to help him and recognize that she’s in danger. Davis handles those contradictions without making them feel like dramatic switches. They accumulate, leaving Veronica increasingly trapped between what she remembers and what she sees.

That tension becomes sharper because Seth initially welcomes his altered condition. His new strength and energy seem to confirm everything he wants to believe about his invention. He hasn’t damaged himself; he has supposedly improved himself. Cronenberg lets that delusion become seductive before exposing its ugliness. Seth’s denial isn’t just a convenient way to delay the inevitable. It grows naturally from his pride and the sheer awfulness of the alternative. Accepting the truth would mean admitting that the achievement meant to transform his life has instead made that life impossible.

Then the effects start making denial difficult for everybody. Chris Walas and his team give the transformation a wonderfully unpleasant physicality. Seth doesn’t simply sprout insect features and become a conventional movie creature. His body deteriorates, sheds pieces of itself, and develops functions he can barely comprehend. The makeup is remarkable, but its real achievement is how closely it works with Goldblum’s performance. Changes in posture, movement, and speech keep the effects attached to a recognizable person. We aren’t admiring an elaborate monster design from a safe distance. We’re watching someone struggle to inhabit his own skin.

Considering its 1986 release, the film can definitely be seen as an analogy for the AIDS crisis of the era. Seth’s deterioration and Veronica’s anguish as she watches someone she loves waste away give that reading real weight. Cronenberg originally understood the material as an analogy for disease more generally, rather than one specific illness. That broader intention doesn’t weaken the AIDS interpretation; it leaves room for it. The film captures the helplessness surrounding serious illness without requiring every detail to correspond to a single diagnosis. What matters is the frightening gap between recognizing that a body is failing and being able to do anything about it.

That’s also why the relationship becomes more upsetting as the creature effects become more extreme. The physical horror never replaces the human situation; it tightens its grip on it. Seth wants to survive, but his desperation increasingly threatens Veronica’s safety and autonomy. Her compassion cannot solve that conflict, and the film refuses to pretend otherwise. Cronenberg finds something genuinely tragic in the persistence of affection after the possibility of rescue has nearly disappeared. By the climax, we can be horrified by Seth’s actions without forgetting the frightened person behind them. Neither response cancels out the other, which makes the final stretch devastating.

The real achievement of The Fly is that its most outrageous images never overwhelm its simplest emotional truth: watching someone suffer can mean discovering how little power love actually gives you. Cronenberg turns a familiar monster-movie setup into something grotesque, intimate, and painfully sad without losing its dark humor or entertainment value. The original premise supplies the accident, but this remake makes every consequence matter. Long after the shock of the effects settles, what remains is the distance between the future Seth and Veronica briefly imagined and the ending neither could escape. That’s a far nastier thing to leave an audience with than a jump scare.

Horror Film Review: Resurrection (dir. by Russell Mulcahy)

Posted on October 26, 2026 by Arleigh

“There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men.” — Ecclesiastes 6:1

There is a fine line between a serial-killer thriller that gets under your skin and one that simply throws enough severed limbs at you to make an impression. Resurrection (1999) spends most of its running time somewhere between the two. Russell Mulcahy’s film has the haunted detective, the religiously obsessed murderer, and the crime scenes that look like nobody has paid the electricity bill in years. None of that is particularly original, but originality is not necessarily the deciding factor with a movie like this. What matters is whether the atmosphere, performances, and central mystery make you willing to follow it into another dark room. More often than not, they do.

Christopher Lambert plays John Prudhomme, a Chicago detective still struggling with the accidental death of his young son. His latest assignment involves a series of murders in which the victims have been left with body parts missing. Working alongside his partner, Andrew Hollinsworth, played by Leland Orser, Prudhomme discovers that the mutilations follow a biblical pattern. The killer believes he can reconstruct the body of Christ, with Easter serving as his deadline. It is an outrageous premise, but an effective one for a horror thriller: every murder advances a larger project, and every breakthrough brings the detectives closer to understanding just how far their suspect intends to go.

The obvious comparison is Se7en, and pretending otherwise would be giving Resurrection more credit for individuality than it earns. The oppressive city, elaborate murders, and collision of religious language with human depravity all feel familiar. Where Mulcahy’s film establishes some identity is in its willingness to push the material toward gruesome pulp. It is less interested in carefully cultivating philosophical dread than in making the killer’s obsession physically revolting. That does not make it the better movie, but it gives it something to work with beyond imitation. The mystery is not just about catching a murderer; it is about interrupting a grotesque act of construction.

That distinction makes the crime scenes more effective than their shock value alone would suggest. The missing limbs are not random embellishments designed to make an already unpleasant murder look worse. They are the reason the murders happen. Each victim has been reduced to a useful piece of somebody else’s fantasy, and that cold practicality is genuinely disturbing. The religious angle sometimes becomes heavy-handed, particularly when the screenplay spells out connections that already seem clear. Still, the central idea holds together well enough to give the investigation momentum. Knowing what the killer wants does not immediately tell the detectives how to stop him.

Mulcahy gives that investigation a suitably miserable visual landscape. Rooms feel cramped and contaminated, shadows seem to swallow whatever light reaches them, and the city offers very little relief from the ugliness indoors. At its best, the direction makes an ordinary doorway or hallway feel like the entrance to something nobody should discover. At its worst, the stylization starts competing with the material. Restless camerawork and aggressive visual flourishes occasionally announce the film’s anxiety rather than allowing the viewer to feel it. There are scenes where a steadier approach might have been more unsettling. Even so, the atmosphere remains one of the movie’s strongest selling points.

Lambert helps because he approaches Prudhomme without any apparent embarrassment about the material. His performance has rough edges, and some of the more emotional dialogue does not land with complete ease, but his tired expression and gravelly voice suit a man who is barely keeping himself together. He looks worn down before the investigation really gets moving, which gives the case somewhere to push him. More importantly, he does not treat the grisly premise like an invitation to ham it up. His sincerity gives the film a degree of emotional weight, even when the writing leans on familiar shorthand for a grieving father.

Orser makes a useful partner, bringing a different energy without turning Hollinsworth into comic relief. Their exchanges help establish the practical business of working a case, something the movie needs whenever the religious symbolism threatens to take over. They are more convincing as colleagues trying to make sense of horrible evidence than as pieces in an elaborate thematic puzzle. That distinction matters because the screenplay is not always as persuasive as its actors. Clues sometimes arrive with suspicious convenience, and certain complications feel less like believable obstacles than devices intended to keep the chase going for another stretch.

The same problem affects Prudhomme’s personal story. Connecting his grief to a case built around resurrection gives the film an obvious emotional framework, but it does not always develop that connection with much delicacy. The ideas are there: the desire to reverse death, the damage caused by loss, and the difference between faith and obsession. Too often, though, the movie states those concerns more clearly than it dramatizes them. Once the investigation shifts into its later confrontations, the balance tips further toward thriller mechanics. The tension survives, but some of the unsettling possibilities raised by the premise get left behind.

What ultimately makes Resurrection worth watching is not that it transcends its influences, but that it gets enough of the fundamentals right. The murders are disturbing, the central obsession is memorable, and Lambert gives the ugliness a battered human presence to work against. Mulcahy occasionally pushes too hard, while the screenplay occasionally asks for too much patience, but neither problem completely drains the experience. This is not the serial-killer thriller you recommend for airtight plotting or subtle insights into belief. It is the one you put on when you want something dark, lurid, and committed to making its familiar nightmare unpleasant again.

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: October 22nd

Posted on October 22, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films

The Trip (1967, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Archie Dalzell)

Blue Sunshine (1978, dir by Jeff Lieberman, DP: Don Knight)

Piranha (1978, dir by Joe Dante, DP: Jamie Anderson)

The Dead Zone (1983, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: October 17th

Posted on October 17, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972, dir by Bob Clark, DP: Jack McGowan)

The Last House On The Left (1972, dir by Wes Craven, DP: Victor Hurwitz)

The Killing Kind (1973, dir by Curtis Harrington, DP: Mario Tosi)

The Brood (1979, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)

4 Shots For 4 Films: Special Martin Sheen Edition

Posted on August 3, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to actor Martin Sheen. It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Martin Sheen Films

Badlands (1973, dir by Terrence Malick)

Apocalypse Now (1979, dir by Francis Ford Coppola)

The Dead Zone (1983, dir by David Cronenberg)

The Departed (2006, dir by Martin Scorsese)

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (dir. by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett) Review

Posted on April 3, 2026 by Arleigh

“You call it tradition. I call it rich people practicing murder.” — Grace

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come returns to the savage, high‑class dystopia of the Le Domas bloodline with a more manic, more crowded, and far bloodier version of the original’s “game‑night‑from‑hell” premise. Picking up years after the events of Ready or Not (2019), the film keeps Samara Weaving’s Grace at the center but expands the stakes beyond one family’s cursed estate into a loose oligarchy of ultra‑rich cultists, each with their own warped sense of tradition and entitlement. The result is a horror‑comedy that feels less like a slow‑burn ambush and more like a running, blood‑slicked marathon, where the line between satire and spectacle blurs but rarely collapses.

What distinguishes Ready or Not 2: Here I Come from many sequels is how deliberately it both leans into and pushes past the formula that made the first film such a cult hit. Rather than replay a single night of hide‑and‑seek in a shuttered mansion, this chapter sends Grace and her newly introduced estranged sister Faith (played by a suitably frazzled and sardonic Kathryn Newton) hurtling through multiple estates, country clubs, and private compounds, each governed by its own set of sadistic rules. The “game” is no longer a one‑family ritual but a broader network of wealthy families that have weaponized occult tradition as a way to justify their casual cruelty. This widening of the universe gives the film a more sprawling, almost procedural feel, as if the audience is being dragged through a gauntlet of different flavors of rich‑person depravity.

The script’s decision to pair Grace with another female lead is one of the film’s stronger creative choices. The strained sibling dynamic between Grace and Faith mirrors the original’s examination of family, but through a more grown‑up, emotionally messy lens. Their bickering and reluctant cooperation prevents Grace from simply repeating the same resilient‑final‑girl schtick; instead, she becomes a kind of worn‑out mentor forced to drag someone else into the nightmare she barely survived. The sisters’ chemistry—equal parts snark, vulnerability, and grudging solidarity—stops the film from devolving into pure nihilism and keeps the audience invested in their survival, even when the body count around them threatens to overwhelm the narrative.

Visually, Ready or Not 2 leans harder into its gore‑buff aesthetic than the first film did. The kills are more elaborate, more inventive, and frankly more grotesque, with set‑pieces involving everything from industrial kitchen equipment to ritualized animal sacrifice and spiked pits. Director Matt Bettinelli‑Olpin and Tyler Gillett, collectively known as Radio Silence, understand that the franchise’s appeal lies as much in its darkly comic carnage as in its social commentary, and they lean into that balance with gusto. The camera lingers on the absurdity of seeing millionaires in bespoke suits and designer gowns being dismantled in grotesque, almost slapstick fashion, which heightens the film’s “eat‑the‑rich” subtext without feeling like a lecture. The horror is still visceral, but it’s also frequently absurd, which fits the tone they’ve established since the original.

The escalation of violence, however, is also the film’s most obvious point of tension. Some of the more extreme set‑pieces verge on the gratuitous, and the pacing occasionally stumbles when the movie pauses between massacres to re‑establish lore or introduce new cult families. Not every supporting antagonist lands with the same impact as the original Le Domas clan; a few of the new patriarchs and matriarchs feel more like walking punchlines than genuinely threatening presences. The film compensates by front‑loading its energy with early, high‑impact kills and goofy one‑liners, but there are stretches where the plot feels like it is waiting for the next big set‑piece rather than organically building toward it.

One of the more interesting additions to the cast is Sarah Michelle Gellar, who pops up in a mid‑film role that taps into genre‑fan nostalgia while also deepening the film’s exploration of complicity and corruption. Gellar’s character is not the altruistic hero she personified in earlier horror‑adjacent roles; instead, she embodies a kind of jaded, self‑interested survivor who has learned to weaponize the same systems of privilege that the Le Domas exploited. Her presence calls attention to the cyclical nature of abuse and privilege in the film’s world: evil tendencies don’t disappear with one family’s downfall; they simply migrate to the next generation of the wealthy and powerful. This commentary on systemic rot is not subtle, but it also doesn’t feel out of place in a franchise that has always mixed political anger with slapstick brutality.

Where Ready or Not 2 arguably falters is in its structural confidence. The original film’s strength lay in its tight runtime and single‑location claustrophobia; the sequel’s sprawling geography and ensemble of killers make it feel looser and more episodic. The middle section in particular risks feeling like a series of vignettes tied together more by tone than by forward momentum. Some of the attempted twists and revelations toward the end rush past the audience before they can fully land, and there is at least one late‑stage development that feels less like a surprise and more like a contractual obligation to franchise‑building. The film clearly wants to set up a possible trilogy, but in doing so it occasionally sacrifices the emotional and narrative payoff that would make its closing sequences truly memorable.

Even with these flaws, the core appeal of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come remains intact. Samara Weaving continues to command the screen with a mix of physical toughness and wounded intelligence, and she’s paired here with a credible foil in Kathryn Newton who pushes her character into new emotional territory. The film also maintains the sharply satirical DNA of its predecessor, using its murderous rituals as a funhouse‑mirror reflection of real‑world conversations about wealth, inheritance, and generational trauma. The kills are over‑the‑top, the politics are broad, and the pacing is uneven, but the movie never loses sight of what it wants to be: a darkly comic splatterfest that lets audiences cheer for the underdog while watching the decadent one percent spectacularly implode.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special David Cronenberg Edition

Posted on March 15, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to one of our favorite directors, David Cronenberg! No one has done more to change the way that the world views Canadian cinema than David Cronenberg. In honor of the man, his films, and his legacy, here are….

4 Shots From 4 David Cronenberg Films

Scanners (1981, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Iwrin)

Videodrome (1983, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)

The Dead Zone (1983, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)

Naked Lunch (1991, dir by David Cronenberg, DP:Peter Suschitzky)

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: The 1980s Part 3

Posted on October 23, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 Shots From 4 Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.

Today, we complete the 80s!

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films

The Fly (1986, dir by David Cronenberg)

Near Dark (1987, dir by Kathryn Bigelow)

Evil Dead 2 (1987, dir by Sam Raimi)

The Church (1989, dir by Michele Soavi)

4 Shots From Horror Films: The 1980s Part 2

Posted on October 22, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we continue the 80s!

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films

The Living Dead Girl (1982, dir by Jean Rollin)

Poltergeist (1982, dir by Tobe Hooper)

Videodrome (1983, dir by David Cronenberg)

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, dir by Wes Craven)

Horror Review: The Dead Zone (dir. by David Cronenberg)

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Arleigh

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I had the power… and I tried to prevent what I saw.” — Johnny Smith

In 1983, David Cronenberg adapted Stephen King’s The Dead Zone with a distinctive emphasis on mood, morality, and psychological depth rather than traditional horror spectacle. The film follows Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken), a small-town schoolteacher whose life transforms irrevocably after a traumatic car accident leaves him in a five-year coma. Upon awakening, Johnny discovers he possesses psychic abilities that allow him to see the past and future by touch. Rather than a gift, this power becomes a heavy burden, isolating him and forcing him into wrenching moral choices.

Cronenberg’s direction is meticulous and deliberately restrained. The film’s muted color palette and stark winter landscapes visually echo Johnny’s emotional isolation and the fragility of human existence. His careful, often gliding camera movements create a mounting sense of quiet dread, while minimalistic sound design underscores moments of revelation with haunting subtlety. This subdued style elevates the film’s psychological impact, transforming it into a thoughtful and melancholy meditation on the cost of harrowing knowledge.

Significantly, The Dead Zone marks a departure from Cronenberg’s signature body horror. Instead of the grotesque physical transformations and visceral mutations that characterize much of his other work, here Cronenberg turns inward. The real horror lies in the malleability of the mind and the elusive nature of perception—how reality, memory, and the future are unstable constructs that can shift and fracture under psychic strain. This thematic focus on the impermanence and distortion of mental reality touches on some of Cronenberg’s deepest artistic fascinations.

The restrained treatment of body horror in The Dead Zone previews the director’s later, more psychologically driven films such as A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and A Dangerous Method, where character studies and narrative depth take precedence over startling visuals. In this early pivot, Cronenberg demonstrates that his mastery lies not only in visual spectacle but in probing the profound emotional and moral dilemmas faced by his characters. The vision-focused horror here is cerebral and grounded, rooting supernatural phenomena in human frailty and ethical complexity.

Christopher Walken’s nuanced portrayal is the emotional heart of the film. He captures Johnny’s vulnerability, weariness, and profound solitude, portraying a man burdened by a cursed knowledge that isolates him from the world. Martin Sheen plays Greg Stillson, the ambitious and morally bankrupt politician whose rise Johnny must foretell and who embodies the film’s central threat. The supporting cast, including Brooke Adams as Johnny’s lost love Sarah and Tom Skerritt as Sheriff Bannerman, delivers compelling and authentic performances that humanize the film’s intimate, small-town environment.

Several changes from King’s novel sharpen the film’s thematic focus. The novel’s sprawling plot, including a serial killer subplot and a brain tumor storyline symbolizing Johnny’s mortality, is pared down or omitted. Despite this trimming, the serial killer element retained in the film remains chilling and effective. It highlights the darker repercussions of Johnny’s psychic gift and injects a tangible sense of dread, reinforcing the psychological weight Johnny carries. This subplot grounds the supernatural within a disturbing reality, illustrating the violent and tragic circumstances Johnny must grapple with as part of his burden.

The concept of the “dead zone” itself shifts in meaning. Originally, the term referred to parts of Johnny’s brain damaged by the accident, blocking certain visions. Cronenberg reinterprets it as a metaphor for the unknown and unknowable parts of the future—the gaps in psychic clarity that allow for free will and change. This subtle shift reshapes the narrative toward a more ambiguous, hopeful meditation on destiny and human agency.

Compared to King’s novel, Cronenberg’s Johnny is more grounded and isolated. The novel frames Johnny’s struggle within a broader spiritual and fatalistic context, highlighted by the looming presence of a brain tumor and a nuanced exploration of hope versus resignation. The film, by contrast, focuses on the emotional and moral fatigue induced by Johnny’s psychic gift, emphasizing his loneliness and reluctant responsibility rather than supernatural destiny.

Walken’s restrained, haunting performance strips away mythic grandeur to reveal a deeply human character. The film’s narrowed narrative tightens focus on Johnny’s internal anguish and his difficult ethical choices, making his plight intimate and richly relatable.

On a thematic level, The Dead Zone contemplates fate, free will, and sacrifice. Johnny’s psychic abilities act as a draining, almost chthonic force, transforming him into a reluctant prophet who is tasked with intervening in grim futures at great personal cost. The film’s bleak winter setting visually reflects Johnny’s alienation, while its deliberate pacing highlights the exhaustion and heartbreak that comes with such knowledge.

Ultimately, Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone goes beyond supernatural thriller conventions. It is a profound meditation on empathy, sacrifice, and the human condition—where the greatest horrors are internal, and the cost of knowledge is both psychic and emotional. Johnny Smith emerges as a tragic, flawed figure wrestling with unbearable burdens.

Cronenberg’s direction and the impeccable performances make The Dead Zone a standout in King adaptations. The film’s enduring impact lies in its rich thematic texture, its moral ambiguity, and its unflinching exploration of human frailty, all conveyed through a director shifting skillfully from physical body horror to psychological and existential terror. The film remains as haunting and resonant now as it was upon release, a testament to the synergy of Cronenberg and King’s extraordinary talents.