“Clayface” Review: The DCU’s Monster Mash Is Squishy, Spooky and Smoothly Sculpted

Gotham’s most malleable menace finally gets a movie of his own, and the DCU’s third film wastes no time proving it has no interest in claying it safe.

After “Superman” and “Supergirl”, “Clayface” is an R-rated swirl into body horror and, believe it or not, the character’s first stint in theatres – that is, if you do not count “The Lego Batman Movie”. So, we’re kind of breaking a mould right here.

That swerve is very on brand for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU, which is a lot more willing to colour outside the lines than the MCU’s streamlined house style. We might have thought he began with certain jolly ranchers in the form of “Creature Commandos” and “Superman” but “Supergirl” this year proved to be of a different tone when compared to David Corenswet’s first outing.

But the case in point is HBO’s “Lanterns”, where Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart play buddy road trip detectives in Nebraska. More brown than green, and still a good yarn.

“Clayface” runs on the same instinct, only pointed at Gotham’s rogues’ gallery, and with Halloween around the corner, the timing is hardly a coincidence with an earthen pumpkin spice, with a lot more peeling.

So, you know the idea they’re playing at. We’re only one bad day away from embracing darkness. Simply one bad day from shaping pots with the devil.

Our main man here is Matt Hagen, played by Tom Rhys Harries, an up-and-coming actor who looks like a cross between Sebastian Stan, Finneas O’Connell, and Jesse Plemons, and charms a room as easily as he works it. He’s swoony. He’s serviceable. You know, the kind of leading man you can picture collecting an Oscar nomination down the line. It suits a character who has always been an actor’s problem, since the very first Clayface, back in 1940, was a horror-film star.

Then his luck runs out. One unfortunate night with the partner of mob boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik) leaves Matt waking up surrounded, and what follows is a swift, brutal fall from grace. Markos has his face sliced and diced, and the showbiz career goes with it. Why was the lead-up to that so freaky? The film never says. But maybe that is just how Szabo likes it.

And so we witness the spiral as a poor Matt then burns through his savings on cosmetic surgeries that cannot save face, which is a rough break in an industry that runs on exactly that.

Enter Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), peddling revolutionary biotech that promises to stimulate regrowth through nanotech cells. She is no Elizabeth Holmes fraudster. She is trying to cure the degenerative disease that killed her brother, and her intentions are right there on the surface, no finger-prick required. You can indeed see everything…

For Matt, it is still a Faustian bargain, and he signs on. The microdoses work, the tests go well. Yet, every cautionary tale needs its honeymoon phase as a crucial event pushes him into an overdose and further mutation kicks in. He soon comes out with shapeshifting powers and an identity spiralling into deeper disarray.

From there, Caitlyn does more than supply the science. She sets out to help Matt through it, slipping into the role of a de facto therapist, the one person he can be honest with while his body and mind come apart. So it is only natural that he starts to develop feelings for her. A man who has lost his face, his career, and his reflection can be forgiven for falling for the only person who still looks him in the eye. Never mind the couch: this one comes with a lab bench.

Complicating matters is Caitlyn’s fiancé, Gotham police detective John Borrelli (Max Minghella), who is busy trying to tie together whatever string of murders is plaguing the city. The closer he gets, the tighter the net, and it is not hard to see where the threads lead. Think “Frankenstein” with a police procedural bolted on. As the walls close in, Harries plays the desperation and the spiral well, a man who knows he is running out of room and cannot stop himself from making it worse.

Harries, a relative newcomer carrying the lead, and reportedly shooting the whole thing on a torn ACL, is pretty good for the most part, delivering what a clay-faced hunk is supposed to in Gotham’s glitz. He carries the character’s pain, enigma, and shifting mindset well enough to push the character to the brink.

Perhaps the one wrinkle in Matt comes when he, a supposedly Oscar-nominated actor, looks into the camera to deliver a line from one of his own movies, and it just plays out plain. Maybe that is just how Gotham does cinema. Hmm, it reminds us of those fake Hot Ones scenes from “Verity”, which arguably made less sense.

What makes the film tick is the Hollywood horror story at its centre. Matt is an actor hungry for fame and identity who picks vanity and loses himself. “Sunset Blvd.”, “Mulholland Dr.” and “Birdman” have all walked this road, and so has “Joker”, which also watched an entertainer curdle into a Gotham menace. “Clayface” just gets there by a more clayful route, with a lot more goo on the floor.

The closer cousin might be Sam Raimi’s “Darkman” (1990), where Liam Neeson’s Peyton Westlake is disfigured by mob thugs and hunts his attackers with synthetic skin and a rack of masks. Ruined face, science that backfires, revenge dressed in bandages. Raimi goes full comic-strip opera, while Watkins keeps the mood grim through and through.

The body horror, for its part, is definitely “The Fly” coded and you can practically hear David Cronenberg nodding along in the dark. It sets out to make you squirm, and it does, with plenty of peeling and slicing.

You know that one scene from the trailer where he’s in the lavatory of an airplane, attempting to cut open his eyelids with a pair of scissors? Yeah. We were gritting our teeth and folding into our seats then.

Sure, it is no “The Substance”. No, it’s not that bonkers. But nobody walks out relaxed from THAT.

Behind it all is James Watkins, fresh off the inferior but still well made “Speak No Evil” and a veteran of “The Woman in Black”, working from a script originally written by Mike Flanagan. Flanagan, who has long carried a torch for the 1992 “Batman: The Animated Series” take on the character, was slated to direct, but other commitments, including the recent “Carrie” series, pulled him away. Watkins and his “McMafia” collaborator Hossein Amini took over. It does not necessarily show Flanagan’s sharpness, but it does its job.

The powers leave room for a shapeshifting extravaganza, but the film doesn’t necessarily get too flashy about it considering its modest 40 million dollar budget. Yes, Matt mostly morphs into different faces. And it is more “Face/Off” than “Terminator 2”.

Funnily enough, the writers of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” have said they once eyed the face-swapping Chameleon as their villain, until Sony’s “Kraven the Hunter” got to him first. So we could have had three iconic shapeshifting comic villains in a year, including Mystique in the upcoming “Avengers” flick…

Knowing where Matt ends up, a path of revenge makes sense, and nobody is trying to build a sympathetic antihero here. We side with him at the start, sure, but we soon watch him walk a dark road with little to no redemption in sight.

Yet, what we could have used a little more is Matt. He is truly alone, with about two friends and not much else to anchor him, and a few more beats with the man behind the mush would have made the descent sting harder and given the revenge arc some emotional ballast. As it stands, it is a little hard to mourn a man we barely got to know before he started melting.

The cruel twist is that his loneliness is partly his own doing. Matt may have precious few people left in his corner, but we watch him dismantle the few things he has left in a haze of mood swings and bloodlust. Clay is supposed to be fired in a kiln, not used to burn every bridge in sight.

The world around him is decently sketched, too. Live-action DCU Gotham is basically a sootier and grimier version of the real-life New York, so anyone hoping for some of the neon from the Arkham games will leave disappointed. Yes, it does feel less distinct from the Gotham of Matt Reeves’ “The Batman”, which Reeves also produces here.

There is no active Batman in sight, either. It is, at last, a DC feature about a Batman villain with no mention or cue of the Caped Crusader, taking the Sony no-Spider-Man route, we guess, in the vein of “Venom” and “Morbius”. Either the Bat is on a very long holiday or Gotham’s PR team deserves a raise.

In a franchise where most things now interlock, “Clayface” stands largely on its own. There are Easter eggs and references, some in plain sight for comic fans, but do not expect the Joker or Zatanna to drop by. It is not that kind of movie.

It also marks his second appearance in Gunn’s franchise after “Creature Commandos”, and the tonal whiplash from comedic action to horror noir is real, though it is the same Hagen.

What matters is how the two connect. The series takes place after “Clayface”, which turns this film into an origin story and makes the animated version hit differently. The Clayface we meet there, an associate to crime and murder allied with an evil princess, is no random thug. He is what is left of the man we watch unravel here. And since we know he ends up electrocuted by Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. and David Harbour’s Frankenstein, then handed over to A.R.G.U.S., there is a layer of dramatic irony to every dark turn he takes. We already know how this story ends, so the film is really about how far he falls to get there.

Gunn has defended building a film around a lesser-known character, and the finished product backs him up. “Clayface” is a good enough watch, and generally well-executed, a compelling cautionary tale and a case in point for a villain-centred film. It will not redefine the shared universe or the genres this movie was built on, but it does not need to. Sometimes a monster movie only needs to deliver the goo and goo it well.

So, what’s next for Clayface? Well, we’re not entirely certain. Perhaps Gunn will choose to incorporate him into “The Brave and The Bold” film? Or the “Dynamic Duo” project? The possibilities could, in fact, be endless as this universe expands, with more actors coming into different roles.

Or you know, if Matt was feeling more jolly, he could help out Laika Studios assuming he can keep his fingers from melting. Or Aardman. Well, they did say they needed clay…

DC Studios’ “Clayface” is currently claying in cinemas.