Claytime's Over
A classic shapeshifting Batman villain gets the body-horror treatment. You get the shaft
The rogue’s gallery of Batman villains has a deep bench, and given that a certain Clown Prince of Crime received not one but two solo outings and Gotham’s waterfowl-related kingpin got his own prestige-TV drama, it makes sense to start pulling out other MVP bad guys for side projects. Personally, we might have gone with a few other first-stringers before landing on Clayface, a character whose name goes back to 1940s Batman comics. The original was simply an actor moonlighting as a criminal; the better-known version was introduced in the Fifties, a shape-shifter who could take on anyone’s appearance but usually presented as a giant, hulking lump of clay. In terms of Hall of Fame status, he’s somewhere between Killer Croc and Solomon Grundy. (IYKYK.)
But Mike Flanagan — longtime Stephen King fanatic, current Carrie reinterpreter, future caretaker of the Exorcist franchise — had the idea of using this DC Comics’ deep cut to anchor a potential body-horror movie. Brand new co-CEO of DC Studios James Gunn happened to dig Flanagan’s pitch, and greenlit a film that would serve as a showcase and a likely introduction of the malleable maniac to the rebooted cinematic universe’s live-action world. (Clayface is already part of the animation side of the house.) Long story short, Flanagan had to drop out. Writer Hossein Amini (Drive) and director James Watkins (Eden Lake) were brought in. The project went ahead as planned, having the bad fortune to hit screens at a moment when the revamped DC franchise finds itself in a bit of a quality-control pickle.
Clayface is not going to reverse that trajectory. In fact, this attempt to have it both ways — a horror movie set in the DC universe, and a DC universe movie that hopes to attract the horror-fan crowd — may have knocked things down a peg or three. Only time will tell whether this is truly a stand-alone experiment in genre mixing and matching or something designed to thread the big lug into the bigger cinematic picture. Yet we can confirm that watching this intriguing-on-paper chronicle of a Batman supervillain once again recast as a tragic antihero, one who’s dealing with the psychological fallout of his newly batshit physical state, is the equivalent of eating a handful of Play-Doh™, and twice as flavorless.
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Movie star Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) is on top of the world. He’s young, handsome, and has just been nominated for an Oscar. Jetting over to Gotham City for a quick talk show appearance to promote an upcoming project, Hagen and his fellow actor/childhood best friend Corey (Joshua James) decide to hit the clubs. A woman in a slinky dress starts dancing with him. She’s Theresa (Ruby Sear), the girlfriend of Gotham’s current reigning gangster Markos Szabo (David Dencik). Turns out that Matt messed around with the wrong moll. A razor blade gets unsheathed. Soon, pretty boy ain’t so pretty no more.
Hagen’s career takes a nosedive. Everyone is scared to testify against Szabo, so his legal case is dismissed. Broke, friendless, and hideously scarred, Hagen gets a dingy apartment in the bad neighborhood he grew up in, and essentially goes into hiding. He happens to come across an article on Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie, doing the best she can), a scientist working with nanotechnology. She’s never experimented on humans before, but Corr takes pity on this sad sack. A series of treatments over several months restores Hagen to his formerly gorgeous glory. It’s comeback time, baby!
There are a few side effects, naturally. Hagen seems to have incredible healing powers. When he gets angry, he has the ability to rearrange his appearance and resemble anyone imaginable. His face is once again highly photogenic, but the skin on his matinee-idol mug… let’s just say it’s unstable at times, and occasionally droops, sags, or altogether melts off his jawline like hot wax. Oh, and it’s slowly curdling Hagen’s mind as well, notably when he finds out that Corey sold him out and that his old business manager (Eddie Marsan) is now working for Markos. He has these newfound gifts. Why not use them for some good, old-fashioned payback?
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All those Cronenbergian elements — The Fly vibes are strong with this one, especially when things start going south — butt up against the comic-book bits of business in ways that suggest an arranged marriage over a passionate genre hook-up. Watkins and co. set up a few creepy scenes and possibly fertile scenarios, then have a tendency cut away too soon or simply seem to lose interest; why you would not take full advantage of a turbulent flight, a pair of scissors and someone’s eyelids being goopily melded shut in terms of an extended showstopper, as opposed to a blink-and-miss set piece, is a mystery. Every so often, Corr’s police-detective fiancé (Max Minghella) reminds us that he works for Gotham City PD, or someone namedrops Coast City, a.k.a. the O.G. Green Lantern’s hometown. You could easily take those references out, and just find yourself occasionally being grossed out in between Hagen’s pity parties, rage spirals and romantic mooning for his now-quite-concerned scientific savior.
That Clayface must rise and fall on its own merits, and is not necessarily as something attached to some unwieldy serialized narrative arc, becomes both a feature and a bug. At this point, no one needs more superhero films that exist merely to set up some coming-soon chapter. Nor do we necessarily need to suffer through a slightly chintzy horror flick about a guy going full Brundlefly, while changing identities willy-nilly in the name of righteous vengeance. Which is really what you’re left with: a rather generic, cut-rate take on a now familiar formula, yet still feels like a franchise placeholder. Clayface the poor, doomed guy destined to give the Caped Crusader a lot of agita down the line (or not!), can transform himself into anything he wants. Clayface the movie can’t even seem to morph into the only thing it needs to be: a mildly satisfying piece of entertainment. Suddenly, Supergirl doesn’t look so bad now, does it?