We are now three movies into the so-called DC Universe — branding that so far doesn’t appear to have cut through to any but the most devoted of nerds. Last year’s “Superman” reboot was respectable enough, this summer’s “Supergirl” a bit less so, but the prospect of a larger story world connecting them hardly sets the pulse racing. A comparatively obscure comic-book adaptation, “Clayface” is considerably more interesting all round, in large part because it doesn’t yet feel bound to any superhero property. Tonally and stylistically, this nasty, gnarly body-horror movie is its own ugly animal; perhaps the characters and conflicts introduced here would pall if given the franchise treatment, but in the context of a single, genre-melding romp, they’re fresh and ickily enjoyable.
The character history of Clayface is long and imprecise, taking different names and incarnations through an assortment of DC Comics products over the last 86 years — absolutely zero knowledge of which is required to watch “Clayface.” Mike Flanagan’s story loosely co-opts the villain origin tale behind many of those incarnations — actor with an ax to grind gains shapeshifting abilities — but otherwise starts more or less from scratch. The film, directed with good humor and a healthy sense of the grotesque by reliable British genre craftsman James Watkins (“Eden Lake,” “Speak No Evil”), is as indebted to cartoonish Nineties horror outings like “Darkman” and “Thinner” as it is to anything in its own direct franchise history. Right down to its grisly practical makeup effects, it’s a pleasing throwback.
It’s fitting that the role of Matt Hagen, a young actor taken down just as he hits the big time, is cast with a face we don’t yet know by heart. Best known for U.K. indies like “Effi o Blaenau” and a supporting role in Guy Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen,” the Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries brings the requisite sandy handsomeness to proceedings, but also an anguished hunger: You can believe he’d do just about anything to regain the chance that has slipped through his fingers once before.
When we meet Matt, being limo-driven to set in the bronzing sunlight of Coast City (that’s DC-speak for Los Angeles), he’s on the verge of becoming a household name, charming the talk-show circuit in the wake of his first Oscar nomination. But he’s still reasonably grounded, spending much of his free time hanging out with less successful actor bestie Corey (Joshua James), and capable of bad behavior that a good publicist wouldn’t countenance — like a nightclub hookup with young honey-trap starlet Mia (Joana Ribeiro), who just happens to be the girlfriend of fearsome Gotham City mobster Szabo (David Dencik). Bad move: The next morning, a thoroughly displeased Szabo takes to Matt’s million-dollar face with a switchblade, and the ensuing career downturn (with a timely side of cancel culture) is quick and precipitous.
A victim of an industry that takes its stars literally at face value, the now-destitute Matt is desperate to repair his ruined mug — which is where experimental scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) comes in. She’s developing a cellular replacement technology for degenerative diseases, still very much in the untested phase; he’s all too willing to be her guinea pig. The early results are miraculous, as his face repairs itself to its previous dreamboat state in a matter of months; unluckily for him, his cells are loath to leave things there. For Dr. Corr is above all else a practitioner of movie science, and soon enough, for no rational reason whatsoever, Matt’s face can take on an unpredictable array of forms, both human and monstrous — with violent consequences for those who have crossed him along the way.
It goes without saying that this is all piping-hot nonsense, but in nearly every department, “Clayface” exceeds expectations — all without getting ideas above its spiritual B-movie station. The script is several notches slicker and slyer than most in this genre lane, thanks to the elegant, lightly ironic touch of Hossein Amini (“Drive,” “The Wings of the Dove”), whose pithy dialogue gives the film’s criminal confrontations some bite, and the requisite romantic stirrings between doctor and patient a bit of crackle.
It helps that the reliably resourceful Ackie gives Caitlyn more curiosity and conscience than the sexy-scientist archetype typically permits, while classy, imaginative casting pays off throughout the ensemble: Max Minghella brings a witty squareness, straight out of midcentury comic-book noir, to the thankless role of Caitlyn’s suspicious cop boyfriend, while Dencik does hair-trigger villain duty with genuinely unnerving levels of sleaze.
This all gives solid (more or less) real-world grounding to the wilder body-horror antics that we’re really here for, and “Clayface” more than delivers the goods on that front. Abetted by consistently inspired prosthetics work, there’s enough stomach-churning, actually face-melting corporeal silly-putty play here to make sense of the film’s Halloween-friendly release date, and at least one dynamite gross-out setpiece — involving fused eyelids, nail scissors and a brutal bout of plane turbulence — that will fuel nightmares well into the coming months.
It’s one of many scenes directed by Watkins with the sadistic glee of a filmmaker handed the rare freedom of an R rating for his comic-book antics: Unconcerned with pleasing the broadest possible crowd, the film is odd, oozy fun, both as juvenile and as adult as it needs to be. If we must have a DC Universe, it could use more movies like this one — just not, you know, exactly like it, rebooted into oblivion. For now, at least, “Clayface” is made to its own mold.