DC Studios' Clayface had its work cut out for it, with people proclaiming it dead on arrival months before its premiere. A Batman villain movie without Batman? The absurdity. The audacity. But the only thing audacious about Clayface is how much it actually works. Because surprise surprise, when you care about the source material, you get a good movie.
Directed by James Watkins, Clayface is the story of square-jawed superstar Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a rising Hollywood actor whose promising career comes crashing down after a brutal encounter with Gotham crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured—a word that feels like an understatement given how much the movie doesn't shy away from the gruesome details. Without getting too much into the meat of things, let's just say Clayface isn't afraid to dig deeper to find how much of the inside of the human body you can stomach seeing outside.
Desperate to get his old life back, Hagen undergoes an experimental treatment invented by disgraced scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who restores his appearance but at the cost of some rather nasty side effects. What follows is a tale of revenge, obsession, and a man with nothing else to lose—except his humanity.
For a movie about how appearances can be deceiving, Clayface is a surprisingly straightforward revenge thriller with bits (heh) of body horror thrown in. If you've seen your share of movies like Payback or The Crow, you can see the twists from outer space. But leaning on tried-and-true formulas ain't such a bad thing (being a story by horror darling Mike Flanagan helps too), and the sleazy Gotham City setting is such a slam dunk for a story like this.
Same goes for its smaller scale. Despite being firmly in the universe where David Corenswet's Superman and Aaron Pierre's Green Lantern reside, Clayface works as a self-contained story, letting it carve its own niche without a superhero looking over its shoulder, for better or worse.
But it's the body horror sequences are what makes Clayface stand out. There are some genuinely grotesque sequences here, as Hagen slowly succumbs to the changes that Dr. Corr's treatments inflict. From nightmarish face-melting scenes to Hagen trying desperately to open his melted eyelids with a scissor inside a turbulent airplane bathroom, Clayface isn't shy about making its audience squirm. I know I did.
Tom Rhys Harries is incredible in depicting Hagen's fall from grace, although I found his descent a little too quick. The movie rushes through his internal struggle between man and monster, and it's jarring how easily Hagen crosses lines he doesn't look like he would cross once the movie needed the story to turn its climactic corner. Also, David Dencik as mob boss Markos Szabo is fine as the author of all of Hagen's pain, but he's frustratingly forgettable. A stronger villain could have made this revenge story way more satisfying.
Still, Clayface is a nasty, disgusting, yet entertaining revenge thriller that gets the job done. Would I like more DC villains get the "Morbius" treatment? If its the same quality as Clayface, I'm all for it.
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