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When addressing the fortunes of the still-fairly-new DCU, you might want to limber up first, or at least do some neck stretches lest you get some tonal whiplash. Regardless what you personally thought of the likes of Superman, Creature Commandos, Lanterns and Supergirl, none of them have been objectively bad (even the overwhelming hate for Supergirl felt exaggerated when you take a step back) and as a whole, viewing figures have mostly been high even if Supergirl’s box office wasn’t. However, while you’d think that this fledgling, connected universe could use some of the coherence of James Gunn’s Superman movie, the latest offering of the DCU is taking a more offbeat route by avoiding such household names as Batman and Wonder Woman, and instead devoting an origin movie to B-tier Batman heavy, Clayface.
If we’re being honest, making a Clayface movie as the DCU’s third feature is kind of like making an Arnim Zola origin movie within the first phase of the MCU, but can director James (Eden Lake) Watkins bring the tragic – but goofy- tale of Matt Hagen up into the A-list?
Actor Matt Hagen has finally reached the big time. Rising from humble beginnings in the slums of Gotham City, his acting career has steadily grown until he finds that he’s been nominated for an Acadamy Award that seemingly gives him the validation he craves. However, after celebrating a bit too hard with his childhood friend and fellow actor, Corey, Matt finds himself flirting with – and eventually bedding – flirty actress Mia Torrez. This proves to be an exceptionally bad career move considering that she’s the main squeeze of mob boss Markos Szabo, and the morning after, he and his goons pay Hagen a visit to ensure he realises his error. Obviously, having your face up carved by a razor to resemble Jigsaw from Punisher: War Zone is going to put a sizable dent in your acting career, but Matt’s life unbelievably gets even worse when smear campaigns against him mean that he’s forced to return to the mean streets of Gotham after his funds are drained.
Penniless and faceless, salvation seems to arrive in the form of Dr. Caitlyn Corr, a scientist who is working on nanites that can treat the body from the inside to heal damaged tissue and skin. With literally nothing to lose, Hagen convinces her to sign him up for incredibly illegal human trials, but after getting hefty doses of her nanite solution into his face, it seems to gift him his old visage back.
However, anyone who’s ever dallied with body horror before knows that the good times just don’t last, and after this “cure” wears off, a desperate Matt overdoses on Corr’s invention. Now packed with tissue altering nanites that react violently to his mood swings, Hagen finds his hate for his enemies growing just as fast as his love for Caitlyn. It doesn’t take long for him to act on both with predictably gloopy results.
Despite what you may feel about the DCU slinging out a villain origin story, you have to admit it’s a far riskier prospect that the box office receipts of Joker would have you believe. Not even taking the divisive nature of Joker: Folie à Deux into account, Sony’s series of Spider-man free movies featuring Spider-Man villains such as Morbius and Kraven The Hunter surely must have given someone pause for thought at DC. But when measured on a sliding scale with Morbius at one end and, say, The Penguin miniseries that spun out from Matt Reeves’ The Batman, at the other, we find Clayface sitting somewhat frustratingly in the middle. It’s cool that a connected comic universe movie has tried to mix things up by going full-on horror, and director James Watkins certainly delivers some prime, squeam-inducing imagery to the masses, but for the most part, Clayface mostly feels like entry level body horror.
To start with the pros, despite that any and all mentions of Batman being conspicuous by their absence, Watkins gives us an appropriately squalid version of Gotham to trawl through, that’s one part Blade Runner, one part Taxi Driver. Forced to return to a cockroach infested apartment after his genuinely horrific assault, we also find Tom Rhys Harries doing good work as the eponymous morpher as he gives us what seems to be a genuinely nice guy on one of the biggest backslides in history. But while his exterior starts to lose its cohesive nature, so too does his mental state as he starts to rely more and more on the scientist played by a strangely low-key Naomi Ackie. His path from tragic actor, to rage-infused vigilante, to out-and-out monster, give him a good range to play with while the FX boffins expertly reduce his bone structure to the consistency of melted taffy.
This results in the film pulling out the stops to deliver some memorable, wince-worthy setpieces that prove to provide the most fun moments in the film and again, Watkins seems to delight in offering up nightmare scenarios from seemingly normal situations. A trip on a place is rendered an ommetaphobe’s worst nightmare when Matt finds he has to separate his sealed eyelids with a pair of sharp scissors as his hands are constantly jolted by uncaring turbulence; the criminal assault that leaves his face a slashed ruin seems less like something you’d get in a DC movie and more like a flashback from Maniac Cop; and a sequence late in the film sees him infiltrate a mobster’s club by constantly shifting his face and form to be other people and freak them out when their blows leave putty-like indents in his flesh. However, while the movie continually hits us with appropriately gooey imagery that does the character visual justice, it does frequently leave the film both feeling a little episodic and strangely bland when dealing with it’s more human matters.
Still, the eyebrow raising levels of violence here (there’s a lot of self mutilation to be had), still feels kind of heavy handed and mean spirited when compared to the day-glo optimism of Superman – but on the other hand I guess it fits far better with the bitter police procedurals of Lanterns and the vicious slapstick of Peacemaker, which technically makes the exploits of Kal-El tonally the odd one out within his own universe. Anyway, while the film refuses to pull any punches when delivering nightmarish callbacks to the malformed works of David Cronenberg and Brian Yunza, and delivers crisp, clean lead performance from Harries, it doesn’t really justify it’s DCU existence other than giving an origin story to a character who had a cameo in a single episode of Creature Commandos…
Fans of Batman villains will find lots to love here, and it’s certainly a malformed head and shoulders above all those attempts by Sony to squeeze money out of comic book wrong ‘uns, but when compared to more complex and crazed examples of cinematic body horror, it’s surprisingly solid considering how famously goopy the title character is. Nevertheless Clayface doesn’t quite leave us as putty in its hands.
Where to watch Clayface: