Over the years, there’s been a lot of talk of the apparent malleability of the comic book movie – that, despite all the capes and tights and magic beams, you can tell any genre of story within these confines. I’ve not found that to be quite true (with the exception of Joker and its much-hated sequel Folie a Deux), the ‘superhero genre’ always overriding whatever spy thriller or coming-of-age tale is purportedly hidden within it. What makes DC’s Clayface unique, then, is that it is truly, first and foremost a horror film, the comic book stuff really just branding atop a gnarly, if very basic, body-horror-turned-slasher.
Technically tied in to the new DCU – the home of the recent Superman and Supergirl movies – and not related, despite plenty of tonal kinship, to the Robert Pattinson Batman or the Penguin show, audiences unfamiliar with the Clayface character could easily go through this entire film without realising it’s part of a superhero universe. There are weird city names, sure, (Gotham not New York, Coast City not LA), but the references end there, making way for the story of a pretty boy actor who gets his face cut up, leading him to, to put it lightly, experimental surgeries which end up altering his flesh and giving him horrendous abilities.
This actor is Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) a working-class Gotham kid done good at the cusp of his career taking meteoric flight. Celebrating, he ends up drunkenly spending the night with a mobster’s girlfriend and gets brutally slashed as a result – Clayface is a very rare 18 exclusively for violence and these scenes of prolonged, close-up facial violence really earn that. Abandoned by his agent and betrayed by his lawyer/manager, he turns to pioneering but rapidly-going-broke doctor Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who injects him with ‘nano-cells’ that heal him but come with gory, goopy side effects.
As Matt’s flesh becomes both less and more than human – sometimes he starts melting into a shapeless mass, sometimes he has enough control to perfectly imitate the faces and bodies of others – Clayface leans in hard to the body horror. There are some real watch-behind-your-hands moments here (even though the trailers spoiled it, the scene in which Matt must cut open his fused-together eyelids on a turbulent plane is unbearably wince-inducing), as well as the uncanny horror of the transformations, Matt’s face sometimes just a *little* off in a very disturbing way.
It does take a little too long to get from here to the murderous revenge bit, though director James Watkins and writer Hossein Amini (who apparently entirely reworked the original script from horror superstar Mike Flanagan) do reward your patience with a showstopping shapeshifting showdown at a bustling club. Just hanging around with Clayface’s characters isn’t quite enough when there’s no gloop or murder happening, the dialogue mostly really blunt and unremarkable, particularly in the not-that-interesting subplot involving Caitlyn’s cop boyfriend John (Max Minghella). Luckily, as a first trial run for Tom Rhys Harries as a leading man, though, Clayface is a resounding success, his ability to balance Matt’s tragedy with his emerging psychopathy as his powers progress consistently compelling.
Outside of Matt himself, whose transformations are all impressively disgusting, Clayface isn’t doing much visually. Whether you know it’s Gotham or just think it’s a strange New York, the city environment is unimpressive and unconvincing – I’ve rarely seen films more distractingly obviously shot in the UK. Then again, when you’ve managed to pull off the miracle of actually sticking within a modest budget ($40-ish million) on a studio comic book movie production, sacrifices do have to be made.
Clayface is not going to revolutionise or define 2020s horror like Obsession and Backrooms did earlier this year, but it feels like a very important milestone for the superhero movie system. Finally, here is a story that takes the most instantly compelling elements of a comic book character without ever bogging them down in lore, easter eggs, or shared universe references. Though it could stand to be a little leaner, this is a mean, gory machine with some of the year’s most revolting shots and a villain protagonist that, ironically, you’d be happy to see more of.
