Anyone who thinks the horror genre’s continued obsession with rebooted, rehashing, and sequelizing is a relatively new phenomenon need look no further than 1989’s The Fly II for evidence to the contrary.
Despite being destined to fall short of its illustrious predecessor, a second helping of gruesomeness was ordered by studio 20th Century Fox regardless, but it’s eye-opening when you break the film down its essence. Chris Walas’ may have directed a sequel to David Cronenberg’s Oscar-winning classic that instantly gained legendary status, but it was a little more than that.
In short, The Fly II was the sequel to the remake of the adaptation of a short story that already ended up with two successors of its own, which technically made it the fifth entry in the franchise dating all the way back to 1958. The Freddy Kruegers, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers of the world may have been lambasted for running their respective IPs into the ground, but let’s not forget about the surprisingly enduring tales of science gone woefully wrong.
Needless to say, The Fly II wasn’t a patch on its illustrious predecessor, although it does boast the requisite volume of gnarly creature effects and stomach-churning set pieces. Then again, Reddit has become a bastion of second chances, with the drastically subpar second chapter in the Brundlefly story coming in for a brand new wave of reconsideration that it may or may not even deserve.
Picking up directly after the events of Cronenberg’s classic, The Fly II finds the child of Seth Brundle being brought into the world, only for it to quickly transpire that the apple definitely didn’t fall too far from the tree. Not the worst horror sequel you’ll ever see, but not quite deserving of underappreciated cult status, either.