Clayface will gross you out perfectly with its wince-inducing body horror

Clayface is silly, schlocky fun, at its best when it lets itself embrace the goriest aspects of body horror.

Some moments in this movie had me wincing and watching between my fingers, all the sickest horror fans will be thrilled to hear.

But it also suffers from a bit of an identity crisis with its tone – and a script that’s very cheesy in places. This is perhaps no surprise, given that it was rewritten by Hossein Amini from notable horror master Mike Flanagan’s script.

It gets deep into the new character backstory of Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) the actor and Hollywood darling at the peak of his powers before dancing with the wrong girl in a club gets his face carved to shreds, in very graphic detail, by mob boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik).

Cancelled after unsavoury falsehoods about the night in question, dropped by his team and desperate, Matt then stumbles across the radical work of scientist Dr Caityn Corr (Naomi Ackie, Mickey 17) with nanoreactor cells, whom he pushes to allow him to be her human guinea pig.

Matt pushes the tests into unchartered territory, despite Caitlyn’s warning that ‘you’ll be in Area 51, they’ll want to bottle you – the last thing you’ll get is your life back!’. But where would the fun (or film) be if he’d listened? And where, indeed, would the body horror be either?

On that front, Clayface treats us to, in no particular order: melting, bubbling and tearing of skin, as well as gruesome complete transformations more than once for Rhys Harries. While the final reveal struggles to make the full impact it hopes for, like in Oscar-winning The Substance – there’s a bit too much reliance on CGI in places – there are still some stand-out, squirmingly uncomfortable scenes along the way.

In particular, the scene where Rhys Harries’ Matt frantically tries to rip apart the skin growing between his eyelids with his fingers, before resorting to using nail scissors in an aeroplane toilet during turbulence. It’s nightmare-inducing stuff.

Overall, we’re not getting much new or groundbreaking with Clayface, but I’m not too mad about that because it has some zest to cut through most of the more uninspired parts, especially thanks to the actors involved. And at barely any point is it anything other than entertaining.

Tom Rhys Harries is a bonafide star in the making, nailing both the tragic aspects of his character Matt, as well as giving in to the darker impulses when the villain origin story really kicks into gear. For a long time you’ll find yourself totally okay with watching him tear out tongues, and smothering and choking people with his skin, before realising that this is actually developing into a very bloody murder spree and that he, ultimately, is the bad guy.

It’s also a movie quite literally relying on his face, and Rhys Harries, who before this was best known for supporting parts in Madfabulous and The Return, as well as Welsh TV thriller The Light in the Hall, has the bone structure and charisma to pull that off.

He is also ably supported by the always-watchable Ackie as Caitlyn and Max Minghella (The Handmaid’s Tale, Industry) in the slightly more workman-like role of her detective boyfriend, John Borrelli. Eddie Marsan is gold, as ever, as Matt’s dodgy business manager too, while there’s some A-plus character casting among Szabo’s crew of dicey henchmen.

The meander towards more of an action film in Clayface’s final act might not be for everyone, but I enjoyed the sense of it building to a vengeful climax for Matt, who is only just emerging from misunderstood anti-hero to engage with his full-on villain beast mode. The final scene, however, feels frustratingly tacked on and ambiguous.

Clayface is the first film of James Gunn’s DC Universe (DCU), launched in cinemas by 2025’s Superman but threatened already by Supergirl’s flop this summer, to be set in Gotham. But I’d advise the Batman enthusiasts not to get hung up on the idea of it linking to other movies yet (a timely reminder too that Matt Reeves’ The Batman with Robert Pattinson exists in DC Elseworlds, so outside of the ‘official’ canon.

While it isn’t perfect, it’s got more personality than some other recent comic book adaptations, and I wasn’t bored for a moment. It does feel like the film had the room and talent to go deeper and bolder though.

Nevertheless, Clayface feels like a good strategy for DC Studios, utilising upcoming, less Hollywood A-List talent to make something more genre-based that’s a bit of fun – and all without unrealistically spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

Clayface is in cinemas from Friday.

Comment now

Comments

Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google

Add as preferred source