Clayface

Stripping a comic-book villain from his heroic nemesis can be tricky business: Sony/Marvel’s attempts to dip into Spider-Man’s storied rogue’s gallery for stand-alone adventures gave the world such high-priced, meme-producing punchlines as Kraven the Hunter and Morbius. DC Comics seems to be having better luck with Batman’s crew of bad guys, from the Oscar-winning Joker and Emmy-winning The Penguin to their latest venture, the body-horror monster movie Clayface.

Clayface first turned up as an adversary to the Dark Knight back in 1940, and while various villains have taken the name over the decades, the character’s general main attribute is his ability to shape-shift, his face and body often taking on a clay-like appearance when he isn’t specifically impersonating someone else. In the hands of screenwriters Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini (Drive), Clayface becomes a monster movie in the Universal Horror vein — the creature is a tragic, lovelorn figure wronged by society — with a heavy dollop of gloppy body horror.

Matt Hagen (Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries) would seem to have it all, leaving behind a tough childhood in the slums of Gotham City to become a movie star and newly-minted Oscar nominee. But returning to Gotham on a press tour, Matt makes the mistake of picking up the slinky but dangerous Mia (Joana Ribeiro, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote), even though she’s involved with local mobster Markos Szabo (David Dencik, No Time to Die). Szabo and his goons cut up Matt’s face, ruining his leading-man opportunities. Between Matt’s attempts to fight Szabo in Gotham’s crooked courts and the multiple surgeries he undergoes in an attempt to repair his face, the actor is left penniless and devastated.

A ray of hope appears in the medical experiments of Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who’s working on nanobytes that will repair tissue, flesh, and organs to their original state. Matt convinces her to take him on as a human test subject, since he’s got nothing to lose, and at first, his face seems to be restored. His anger eventually leads to an instability in his appearance: initially face-meltingly monstrous, later developing an ability to take on the appearance of others. These complications only fuel his desire for vengeance upon Szabo and everyone else who ruined his life. As Caitlyn’s police-detective boyfriend John (Max Minghella) starts investigating the murders of Matt’s enemies, the nanobytes take an increasing toll on Matt’s body and soul.

For a horror movie based on a comic-book villain, Clayface makes sure that the characters matter before the mayhem starts. We feel for Matt, a seemingly nice guy to everyone around him, as he pays a huge price for a minor slip-up. Harries possesses a physical malleability — he’s got the kind of looks that can switch from standard-issue handsome to menacing with the tiniest shift of angle — that makes him a perfect choice for the role, fully believable as both matinee idol and flawed anti-hero. A less thoughtful script would have treated Caitlyn as a plot device only, but her well-intentioned desires to help Matt and to develop what could be a revolutionary health-care innovation gives the character more substance than that of stock mad scientist, particularly thanks to Ackie’s empathetic performance. (Clayface hits theaters not long after co-writer Mike Flanagan’s take on Stephen King’s Carrie premiered on Prime Video; that miniseries also takes the time to plumb the depths of its complicated antagonists.)

Director James Watkins (the Speak No Evil remake) mounts some memorably terrifying (and squishy) moments, particularly a sequence in a turbulence-tossed airplane in which Matt attempts to cut apart his eyelids, which have begun to grow together, with some tiny but very sharp scissors. (Somewhere, Buñuel and Dalí are smiling.) Production designer James Price (Poor Things) gives us another rainy Gotham where 1940s skyscrapers share space with an endless array of dark alleys and steam tunnels; the only giveaway to this film being shot in Europe in a nightclub bathroom where the stall doors go all the way to the floor.

Making the title character an actor provides an apt metaphor; over the course of Clayface, we see that Matt seems to lack a fixed internal life. He adapts to situations and other people as they come along. When the possibility of acting is seemingly taken away from him, he has no resources, no Plan B. The shape-shifting creature was always part of who he is, even if the ultimate version turns out to be more monstrous than he can bear. This duality will neatly serve any possible future installments where he might come into conflict with Batman — another split personality — and the two can square off as dark and darker knights.

Director: James Watkins
Screenwriter: Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini; story by Mike Flanagan
Cast: Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll, Joshua James
Executive producers: Michael E. Uslan, Chantal Nong Vo, Lars P. Winther, Paul Ritchie, Rafi Crohn, Trevor Macy
Producers: Matt Reeves, Lynn Harris, James Gunn, Peter Safran
Director of photography: Rob Hardy
Production design: James Price
Editing: Jon Harris
Music: Volker Bertelmann
Sound design: Ben Barker, supervising sound editor & designer; Glenn Freemantle, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, Domain Entertainment, 6th & Idaho
In English
108 minutes