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James Watkins’ Clayface delivers grotesque body horror practical effects and compelling performances, but feels disconnected from the wider DC Universe
IN Alan Moore’s iconic one-shot Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker famously taunts Batman by saying: “All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy”.
Bolded on its particular page in the graphic novel, “one bad day” is referenced several times in DC Studios and James Watkins’s Clayface, where a famous actor slowly descends the annals of insanity after his own bad day.
Supposedly set within the growing DC Universe (DCU), Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) is experiencing a meteoric rise in Hollywood.
Boasting smoking good looks, a jawline to cut through diamond, a dramatic versatility on-screen and having starred in multiple popular films, Matt is finally nominated for an Academy Award.
Out to celebrate the news that night, despite a warning from his best friend, Matt hooks up with Mia, the girlfriend of Markos Szabo (David Dencik), who is one of Gotham City’s biggest mobsters.
Ambushed in bed the next morning by Markos and his goons, Matt’s face is horribly carved up. Attempting to take the gangster to court results in Mia accusing Matt of sexual assault and the media running a smear campaign, causing him to lose his talent agency’s support and any further prospects as an actor.
The financial impact of the case, along with the repeated costly plastic surgeries to fix his face, seals the end of Matt’s life as an actor.
Out of desperation, Matt reaches out to Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a struggling scientist. By becoming the first to undergo human trials for Caitlyn’s untested nanotechnology procedure, the actor’s face is finally, miraculously fixed.
Rather than being the silver bullet for his problems, the nanotechnology’s adverse side effects begin to alter the very fabric of who Matt Hagen is.
Grotesque, gripping transformation
There is really nothing objectively bad with Clayface. It is a solid creature feature with an emotional core at its centre, until that core blackens, cracks and clay oozes out.
Harries is fantastic as Matt, shuffling between the different stages the character traverses from the height of Hollywood to a shapeshifting lethal force of nature.
Ackie is great opposite him, portraying a gifted scientist that is split between wanting her career to rebound by continuing to treat Matt or to stop due to the dire effects her science is having on him.
A different spin that Watkins — along with screenwriters Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini — puts on the film is how Clayface pulls the rug out from under the viewer’s feet.
At the climax of the film, despite posturing Matt as a sympathetic male lead, the film then has its own Obsession-esque moment.
It is a great way to separate the film from others of its kind, where the lead becomes a monster due to some sort of accident and enacts his vengeance as a superhero or morally-grey antihero.
This is not the case with Clayface: it is an unabashed supervillain origin story.
Another excellent aspect of the film is the heavy use of prosthetics and practical effects.
Sans the final look at Matt’s transformation right before the film ends, which — at face value — looks purely digital and CGI, much of his early transformations are beautifully disgusting because of how hard the filmmakers tilt into utilising practical makeup effects and clay prosthetics.
With the relaxation of censorship by Finas recently, these transformations, the blood and gore are all gloriously uncensored in the Malaysian cut of the film.
The only scene that was obviously censored occurs early in the film, when Mia gets up from the bed unclothed as Markos and his men prepare to turn Matt’s face into a high school study table.
DCU outlier with a bite
The only problem with Clayface is that it suffers from the same malady as modern films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: this film feels disconnected from the rest of the DCU.
Despite being set in Gotham City, there are no references to Batman, the “Bat Family” or anyone in Batman’s rogues gallery.
After everything that happens in Superman, Supergirl, Creature Commandos, Peacemaker and Lanterns, Clayface makes no mention of anything from these previous DCU entries either.
These could be easily answered with a stinger, say for The Brave and the Bold (the planned Batman and Robin film), or anything else really as an after-the-film scene but there are no mid- or post-credit scenes as well.
In fact, from Watkins’s directing and Rob Hardy’s cinematography, along with the film’s overall atmosphere and grounded styling, Clayface seems like it would fit in better within Matt Reeves’ standalone The Batman films, rather than the fantastical nature of the DCU properties.
For those that are expecting cameos, namedrops or easter eggs, Clayface may disappoint but for those that enjoy body horror, the film is a treat with how it differentiates itself from its cape and spandex peers.
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