Directed by James Watkins, Clayface tells the terrifying descent into hell of a promising Hollywood actor who has become a monster driven by revenge. After being brutally disfigured by a local mob boss, rising movie star Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) volunteers as a test subject to restore his original face but experiences a series of horrifying psychological and physical side effects that transform his body into living clay.
The DCU’s first chapter, appropriately titled Gods and Monsters, has so far provided some really great projects that have taken a lot of creative risks to give the newly rebooted universe the chance to thrive in a heavily comic book film saturated market, as well as thrive in the shadow of its larger and successful competitor, the MCU. Projects like Creature Commandos, Superman, Peacemaker and Lanterns have proven to be really successful so far and have been able to stand out from other comic book franchise installments. But now the DCU is taking another bold swing by dipping its toes into horror for its newest installment based on one of Batman’s most unique villains from his rogues’ gallery, Clayface.
The film was never part of the original slate James Gunn announced years ago for the first phase of the DCU but it became a part of it after an impressively pitched screenplay by horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan, who based his script largely around the Matt Hagen incarnation of the character from the Feat of Clay story arc from Batman: The Animated Series released in 1992. While the original script has been changed up since then, a lot of Mike Flanagan’s ideas and narrative style remained under the direction of James Watkins, creating what could be best described as the DCU’s first body horror and supervillain origin story.
As someone who is a big fan of the character from comics and the animated adaptation previously mentioned, I was really interested to see what this film would be like and I hoped it would be a far more compelling supervillain solo film compared to the atrocities Sony had given us with their Spider-Man villain films. After getting to attend a special early screening for the film and finally getting to see it after a long time coming, I was very pleased with how this film turned out and had a damn good time with it.
Clayface is a brutal, gory, and disturbing body horror revenge film that explores the loss of identity and humanity, the ravages of toxic love, and the dark side of scientific ambition, set within a self-contained pocket of the larger DCU. It fully delivers on the promised body horror and monstrous insanity, but it also delivers a tragic story of one man’s psychological descent into madness after his life was destroyed. This was the film I wanted it to be while also being a bit more with the creative risks it takes, and I really loved it even with the one hindrance that prevents it from being a masterpiece molded from clay. Pun intended.
The cast of this film consists of relatively unknown names to me, aside from two individuals, but I think they all did an awesome job with their respective roles, and they fully committed to the intensity and insanity this film has to offer. The absolute superstar of this film that floored me with his phenomenal performance was Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen. Tom Rhys Harries delivers a truly haunting performance that captures the weight of fame, imposter syndrome, grief, and the quiet devastation of settling for what’s left after his life gets tragically destroyed by one bad day. Not only does he endure a grotesque physical transformation upon taking a body-changing serum, but he also goes through a psychological transformation as he slowly begins to descend into madness and villainy over the course of the film.
Initially, you do feel immense sympathy for him after being mutilated by merciless mobsters and being broken by a failed justice system, but then you begin to be horrified of him as he goes on a monstrous pursuit of revenge that corrupts his once good heart and mind, along with his body, making him less human as the story goes on. He is not treated as an anti-hero at all but is treated as a tragic villain who has spiraled out of complete control, much like the character in the comics and the animated adaptation of the character that this version is based on. Most of Batman’s rogues have always been tragic characters in their own various ways, and this film perfectly captures that element with Matt Hagen, both in writing and through the magnificent performance by Tom Rhys Harries. I hope to see more of his character going forward in this universe and to one day see him go up against the DCU’s Batman, whomever it might be.
Also delivering an incredible performance in this film is Naomi Ackie as Dr. Caitlyn Corr, the scientist who creates the serum that unintentionally turns Matt Hagen into a monster. She is an individual driven by scientific ambition and sympathy to help Matt Hagen turn his life around. But she soon finds herself morally torn between caring for him and stopping her work with him once he begins to have murderous intentions towards the ones that wronged him, as well as the toxic obsession he begins to form with her.
Naomi Ackie delivers a great amount of compelling empathy and humanity in her performance as this character who is trying to be the one thing that could stop Hagen from further spiraling yet tragically can’t do so. Their relationship feels like a parallel of the tragic love story in The Phantom of the Opera but executed in a much more modern and disturbing fashion.
The supporting characters are given good performances by their respective cast members, but unfortunately they end up being the main weak point of this film due to being underdeveloped compared to the two leads. They aren’t terrible characters by any means; I was just hoping for a bit more from some of them to stand out, including the Mobsters, who are the ones responsible for setting Matt Hagen on his dark path. Despite butchering Hagen’s face and systematically destroying his life piece by piece, there isn’t much to these sadistic mobsters other than being sadistic mobsters.
DC has numerous mobster characters from comics that all have their own unique personalities and backgrounds that make them engaging as well as stand out from your typical Godfathers and Sopranos. Why this film didn’t choose to use any of them, or at least make its own mobsters a bit more interesting, is a bit puzzling given that it does take place in Gotham City, home to many iconic mobsters in the DC universe. With that said, they are written as hateful enough for us to want to see them suffer horrible fates at the hands of Hagen, and this film absolutely delivers on that front.
This film’s narrative aimed to be a grotesque revenge body horror, and it absolutely ends up being what the filmmakers promised, but it also ends up being an investing character study of the lead character’s tragic physical and psychological descent into madness involving failure of the justice system, toxic obsession, and scientific ambition gone wrong. The mixture of horror combined with comic book elements creates a perfectly blended villain origin story that can be both highly disturbing and brutally fun in an unhinged manner, just like the source material it’s based on.
Some of the themes in this film can be considered similar to other body horrors like The Fly and The Substance, but the truth is that this film’s themes are largely based on elements of the character in comics that predate both films, and elements of the Feat of Clay story arc from Batman: The Animated Series from 1992, which Mike Flanagan’s original screenplay was inspired heavily by. And while this is considered to be a horror film, it is more grossly disturbing than scary, so if people are expecting this film to be a jump-scare-per-minute film then they will be disappointed.
That being said, this film does feature a perfect balance of some truly unsettling and gruesome sequences of body horror while also providing fun and unapologetically gory action sequences with some natural Sam Raimi-like horror humor injected into it.
The tonal shifts are handled brilliantly and never take away from the overall mature tone of this film. And while there are certainly some clever easter eggs and references to the wider DCU hidden throughout the film, this is a mostly self-contained story similar to Lanterns, and I was completely fine with that. This was a true supervillain origin film done right, which is so good to say after years of terrible supervillain origin films provided by Sony.
The technical elements of this film are superb on every aspect. Despite the lower budget this film has in comparison to the previous DCU installments, it makes full use of it through amazing cinematography, stellar editing, and of course incredible effects. In some ways, this film looks and feels a lot like it is part of the Matt Reeves Batman universe as opposed to the DCU with the way it portrays Gotham as a gothic yet grizzled location created through fantastic visuals in a grounded and grim aesthetic. You can take all the gorgeous frames of this film and pair them with the gorgeous frames of The Batman and The Penguin, and you can see they all look like they are a part of the same world even when they are confirmed not to be.
And then, of course, there is the body horror and gore of this film that is just as grotesque and bloody intense as the marketing promised and it is all brought to life beautifully through a great blend of practical and CGI work. The body horror sequences of this film are not for the faint of heart due to how extremely gruesome and unsettling they are crafted to be, including the scissors sequence on the plane that had me and others squirming in our seats. The insane shapeshifting powers Clayface is known for are done extremely well as they are brought to life mostly through extensive practical effects that are both highly impressive and highly disturbing. CGI is only used for the powers in certain sequences that practical effects couldn’t achieve on the film’s relatively low budget, but it honestly looks awesome for the majority of the time. Even when it looks gooey or uncanny in some places, I believe it adds more to the grotesque body horror elements of the film and feels incredibly fitting for a character called Clayface.
The iconic comic accurate monstrous form of the character is built up really well over the course of the film before getting an ultimate reveal in the third act that is grossly glorious and far more disturbing than I expected to be. We were given a first look at the character’s form in animation in last year’s Creature Commandos, but the live-action version is a hundred times more terrifying compared to the animated version. With a combined use of practical and CGI effects, the monstrous form of Clayface was absolutely worth the long build-up.
Enhancing the horror-themed narrative and visuals of the film is a horror-themed score by composer Volker Bertelmann, known for his award-winning work in All Quiet on the Western Front. Volker delivers a very gothic-toned score that’s extremely fitting for a Batman villain and really makes the most intense and quiet sequences of the film hit much harder. Several licensed songs do surface throughout the film, but they are appropriately used and only used a few times to allow the score to take full command of the most crucial scenes. There is a great usage of the song “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago that gets twisted for a more heartbreaking and haunting sequence later in the film when it comes up again in a cover version made exclusively for this film, performed by Jasmine Jethwa.
Aside from the weak supporting characters, Clayface is honestly a masterfully made film that serves as both a damn good horror film perfect for the Spooky season and a really unique comic book project for the DCU to have included in its library. Just like with projects like Creature Commandos, Superman, Peacemaker and Lanterns, this film took some creative risks that largely paid off and shows how versatile this new universe can be when great artists with great ideas are given the chance to have them be fulfilled instead of being shot down by greedy corporate executives or incompetent “fans” that continuously say the same dumb statement of “Nobody asked for this.” The only way for the DCU to survive is to keep taking creative risks with its characters and lore so if it means we end up getting some really good stories like this one then I’m all for it. I’m going to give Clayface an A = 97.
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