It’s always refreshing to see a comic book movie that remembers how certain name brand characters were once essentially sci-fi monsters - people who had weird shit happen to their bodies and were left to grapple with the psychological torment of their new existence. In the now-waning era of weightless CGI spectacles and interconnected cinematic universes, Clayface makes an admirable attempt to scale things back into something smaller, nastier, and more interested in the horrors of the human condition. Despite having almost everything it needs to work on paper, and a few genuinely outstanding moments, this tragic body horror story never quite manages to overcome its own shortcomings into actual greatness.
Directed by James Watkins (Speak No Evil, The Woman in Black) and written by Mike Flanagan (The Exorcist: Martyrs, Carrie) and Hossein Amini (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Drive), Clayface follows Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a rising Hollywood star whose promising career comes crashing down after a disastrous night in Gotham City. Following an encounter with mob boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik), Matt has his face brutally mutilated and his reputation ruined, leaving him disfigured, broke, and publicly disgraced. Desperate to reclaim his former life, he turns to Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a scientist developing experimental nanotechnology capable of regenerating damaged cells. The treatment initially works miracles, restoring Matt’s handsome features and offering him a second chance at stardom. But naturally, things take a turn for the grotesque when his miraculous recovery begins producing some decidedly less desirable results.
The initial attack on Matt is appropriately brutal, an excruciatingly graphic sequence (among a few) that establishes just how much of his identity is tied to his appearance. His career, relationships, and public reputation are all ripped away alongside his camera-ready face, leaving him with little more than desperation and an increasingly unstable sense of self. It’s a solid premise for a modern monster movie, particularly one that wants to explore the grotesque intersection of celebrity culture, vanity, and the lengths people will go to preserve their supposed place in the world.
When Clayface gets down to the nasty business of making its audience uncomfortable, it definitely delivers. Watkins has a clear understanding of the visceral power of bodily violence, with facial mutilation, needles, scalpels, and increasingly disturbing transformations giving the film a genuinely queasy edge. The specificity of the horror is particularly effective, keeping the focus squarely on the face as Matt’s most prized possession becomes the source of his greatest torment. One sequence aboard a turbulent flight that involves eyes and tiny scissors is the sort of absolutely unhinged set piece that gets this whole experiment greenlit in the first place. It’s difficult to imagine anyone watching without instinctively bringing their hands up to protect their own eyes.
The comparisons to David Cronenberg’s films, most notably The Fly, are inevitable, and not entirely flattering. Both films explore the deterioration of the body as a reflection of an increasingly fractured psyche, with physical transformation becoming inseparable from emotional collapse. But where Cronenberg’s masterpiece works because it grounds its grotesquery in an intimate, devastating character study, Clayface struggles to establish the same emotional connection. Matt’s ability to morph into different people, his regenerative powers, and the increasingly unpredictable ways his face responds to his emotional state provide plenty of opportunities for inventive horror. His descent into a murderous avenger, taking revenge on the people who betrayed him, also gives the film a suitably pulpy revenge-thriller backbone.
Yet I never felt like I knew Matt well enough to become particularly invested in his downfall. The film reportedly had a more extensive childhood backstory involving generational trauma and his troubled relationship with his father (played by Aaron Paul), and the absence of that material is felt throughout. Matt speaks about feeling like an impostor and trying to make something good out of something ugly, ideas that should have served as the foundation for a much more compelling tragedy. Instead, his psychological turmoil too often feels like a collection of themes the screenplay wants to tap without fully committing to any of them. Harries is talented and does what he can with the material, while Ackie brings some welcome tenderness to their complicated relationship, but neither can entirely compensate for the film’s shortcomings.
There’s also something frustratingly anonymous about the film’s presentation outside of its more inspired horror sequences. Gotham City rarely feels like an actual lived-in place, with some of the wider shots and digital backgrounds looking particularly artificial. Still, there’s enough here to make Clayface a worthwhile detour from the usual superhero formula. Jon Harris’ (28 Years Later) editing deserves particular credit, lending a remarkable fluidity to Matt’s rapid transformations and helping sell the illusion of a body that can become virtually anything instantaneously. A climactic nightclub massacre is another highlight, allowing the film to embrace its nastier instincts before Matt’s final turn firmly establishes that this is no longer simply a story about a victim seeking justice.
Ultimately, Clayface is a perfectly respectable, middle-of-the-road monster movie with some genuinely inspired moments of body horror. Watkins handles the material competently, even if I can’t help wondering whether Flanagan might have delivered a more emotionally resonant film had he been able to direct it himself. The result is a curious case of a movie whose individual pieces are often more compelling than the whole.
Had this not carried the DC branding and the baggage of exhausting superhero franchises, I suspect its old-fashioned Halloween monster-movie sensibilities might have generated considerably more enthusiasm. To its credit, the film certainly doesn’t seem to have much, if any interest in trying to connect to the larger superhero world, and is all the better for it. There’s something to be said for a comic book adaptation that wants to make audiences squirm rather than simply dazzle them with another digital spectacle. I just wish Clayface had given me a reason to care more about the man underneath all that melting flesh.
It gets pretty gnarly, and that counts for something. But for a movie about a man who can become anyone, Clayface never quite figures out who it wants its protagonist to be.
‘Clayface’ is now playing in theaters.
