Here’s the very good news: Reviews for Clayface are generally positive, and out of the gate, the film has a much higher Rotten Tomatoes score than DC’s last effort, Supergirl (around 74 percent positive instead of 52 percent).
As a stand-alone body horror story set in the DC world, director James Watkins (Speak No Evil) is said to largely succeed in pulling off the story of Matt Hagen — a rising Hollywood actor from Gotham City whose career is destroyed when a crime boss brutally disfigures his face, prompting him to undergo an experimental procedure that turns him into a shapeshifter. Even detractors say star Tom Rhys Harries is terrific in his major leading role debut, and praise the film’s use of practical effects.
And with a modest, by superhero movie standards, $40 million budget, the film doesn’t need to be a blockbuster to turn a profit when it opens Friday (it’s projected to open north of $20 million, up against some surprise competition from the documentary You Can See Everything).
The film has its share of detractors, too, with some criticizing the film — with its script by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini — for being a rather predictable revenge thriller that doesn’t do anything with its Gotham City location.
Here’s what critics are saying about Clayface:
The Hollywood Reporter: “Clayface emerges as one of the year’s big surprises … With its grimy visuals and pulpy dialogue redolent of comic books in the most evocative way, Clayface delivers the sort of psychological depth and emotional resonance that enable it to bear comparisons to the works of such body horror maestros as David Cronenberg and Sam Raimi.”
USA Today: “A messy DC miss … While Harries gives a complicated human touch to all the assorted versions of Matt’s internal strife and external facade (boosted by some excellent effects work), Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini’s screenplay does almost nothing with him as a character … Clayface also is the one Batman-adjacent project that, strangely, doesn’t utilize Gotham itself as a character.”
The Telegraph: “Director James Watkins, of Eden Lake and The Woman in Black, has crafted a stylish and stomach-twisting, contemporary, urban, body horror inspired by vintage material that just so happens to be a DC superhero title. There is no pandering to fans, nor gestures towards grander unfolding narratives … It cannot be overstated how much fun it is to soak up a film like this on what feels like its creators’ largely unhindered terms. Aside from the occasional reference to Gotham City, in fact, you could feasibly leave a screening of Clayface with no idea you’d been watching a franchise movie.”
The Independent: “Cinematographer Rob Hardy … has as difficult a time here as he did in this summer’s flat and murky Supergirl when it comes to establishing a distinct visual language … Rhys Harries does much of the heavy lifting here; the actor, in his first major lead role, works each scene with such wounded intensity that you could layer on a dozen more prosthetics and the performance would still leap out.”
Slant: “Shrewdly, Watkins’s film baits the audience into identifying with the visceral thrill of Matt’s revenge on the mobsters, crooked institutional figures, and traitors who destroyed his life, only to reveal how possessive and destructive he has become as he spirals into violence against innocent people, driven by delusion and rage … As a standalone property, Clayface is a surprisingly sturdy, compelling horror-thriller. As an oblique table-setter for a coming update of Batman, it’s a stroke of brilliance.”
IGN: “It takes the film a while to find its groove, but once it does, Clayface delivers just the sort of nasty but fun body horror I was hoping it would … Clayface is at its best when it embraces its B-movie absurdity. It’s a fun body horror romp that realizes its nasty potential in its final act after a slow-burn set-up … The film largely employs old school practical makeup effects to cleverly and gruesomely depict Matt Hagen’s transformations, with Tom Rhys Harries’ desperate, driven performance further selling the illusion of a man becoming a monster.”
Rolling Stone: “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 … 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?”
The Houston Chronicle: “James Watkins’ highly entertaining origin story of how a once hopeful young actor became a broken man and ultimately a monster. While the movies based on the DC universe may have been hit-and-miss over the years, the low-key and darkly compelling Clayface ranks as one of the successes … The body horror of Hagen’s continuing metamorphosis is often creepy, disturbing and hard to watch. In short, while Clayface the man might have his issues with his appearance, Clayface the movie comes out looking good.”