David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly ended with one huge loose end: the fact that Veronica Quaife is carrying Brundlefly's child. That serves the basis for The Fly II, directed not by Cronenberg but by Chris Walas, who by trade is a make-up and special-effects artist. All of this -- the film's origins, premise, and director -- would suggest a mediocre film based purely on gross-out visuals. While it does have plenty of those, it also turns out to have a solid, if generic, storyline that is unable to compete with its predecessor but that does the franchise justice on a simpler level.

The film wastes no time picking up where it left off. In less than a minute, we're in the a delivery room at Bartok Industries, a genetic science corporation, with Quaife screaming as her stomach rolls and bulges unnaturally. The offspring seems, at first, to be another human-fly hybrid, but beneath its grotesque shell is a completely normal (-looking) baby boy. Quaife dies during the birth as doctors, scientists, and Anton Bartok himself look on objectively. The boy, Martin Brundle, experiences accelerated aging due to his genetic makeup and lives in the facility as a research subject under constant watch of the organization's scientists. He exhibits no fly-like characteristics and is told that as long as he is given his injections he will remain fully human.

Things start to change on Martin's fifth birthday, an age at which he exhibits the physical development of a twenty-year old and mental development far beyond that of many humans. Martin is allowed to leave the complex, is provided with his own, private, home, and is also given a job at the company. He soon meets a girl, too, Beth Logan. But things soon begin to go downhill. He discovers, for example, the gruesome results of a teleportation experiment involving a dog he was fond of, leaving the creature as a wretched, pitiful abomination. Martin himself begins mutating as well, and it's not long before he begins to resemble his old man. It turns out Bartok was feeding him lies (and placebos), and his fate of becoming a Brundlefly was set from the start.

Throughout all of this, the obvious metaphor is that of entering adolescence. Just at the time Martin begins becoming interested in women, taking on more responsibility, and living with greater privacy (or so he thinks -- that turns out to be another lie), he also begins undergoing horrible physical changes. What he at first believes is an infection on his arm, and which by no coincidence oozes puss like the world's worst zit, is really the beginning of a massive physical transformation. He is becoming a fly. The horrors of adolescence are graphically portrayed as Martin continues his transformation, eventually becoming completely encased in his own repulsive growths before experiencing rebirth as a totally different being. It is perfectly analogous to the horrors young high-schoolers face every day: the undergoing of such drastic transformations that their own bodies become unfamiliar vessels taking them to their next stage of growth.

Also falling in line with the "horrors of adolescence" theme is the portrayal of essentially all adults as heartless nihilists whose interests lie entirely in either scientific progress or self gratification, the former being a means of obtaining the latter. The doctors that care for Martin in the complex are perpetually unsmiling, showing emotion only when he angers them, showing care only insofar as he is beneficial to their research. Nearly every adult in the film is more monstrous than even a fly-human hybrid.

Bartok is an exception to this rule at first but is eventually shown to be no different from any other adult. From the moment of Martin's birth, he takes the role of father figure, acting consistently kindly toward the boy though ultimately doing little more than shielding him from reality. He lies to Martin, telling him that he will be a perfectly normal human, save for his accelerated development, as long as he continues taking the drugs given him by the corporation, and the two-way-mirror-less home he gave him turns out to be rigged with hidden cameras. These are two things that every child dreads -- being under adult watch and being destined to become an adult -- and when Martin discovers the lies (almost simultaneously), he becomes every bit as rebellious as we would expect him to be. The horror here is Martin (and we) can no longer even trust even the kindest of paternal figures.

The last quarter or so of the film involves Martin's transformation to monster-hood. The scariest part during this act is not his final form but the moment at which he accepts the change. Spotted with random strands of silk, disfigured by massive inflamations, he tells Beth, "I'm getting better. My body is growing stronger. I feel good. [...] Until now I've been nothing more than an open wound: defenseless, weak, vulnerable. Don't you see? I'm healing. ... I'm healing." The mere act of transforming caused him to accept his transformation. Perhaps we should be equally frightened when children accept adulthood.

To go much farther would be to spoil the film somewhat, so I will leave it at that as far as the plot and its parallels with the adolescence-to-adulthood transition go. There is one more thing that should be mentioned, though, and that is the gore. Just as in Cronenberg's film, The Fly II is filled with many a vomit-inducing moment. There is one scene for instance -- and this one doesn't even have to do with metamorphosis -- in which a guard gets acid spit on his face by the Martin-fly, and as he screams and tries to hold his burning skin with his hand, he effectually proceeds to pull his own melting face off of his skull. Walas does not take quite as a sophisticated approach to gore as Cronenberg did; whereas Cronenberg mutilated flesh so as to examine its philosophical significance, Walas seems to be mostly just having fun. There are one or two moments when the horrible deformations are meant to evoke pity, as in the case of the aforementioned dog that is sent through the machine, in order to to upset us with the adult characters' uncaring attitude toward life and the lives of their subjects, but for the most part this movie is gross for the sake of gross. And trust me: there's plenty of gross, just as there was in Cronenberg's film.

Cronenberg's remake of The Fly was a madman's masterpiece. This film is much more basic, taking on subject matter that we are all familiar with on a personal level, instead of deep philosophical musings of the flesh and its interaction with technology. It is a bit more approachable in this way (ironically, given the repulsive nature of the film's surface), but this also makes it not quite as good. It does well what it tries to do; it's just that it aims to be good rather than great. But hey, we'd be in a big mess if every director was trying to be the next David Cronenberg.