Batman’s deep bench of colorful supervillains naturally lend themselves to horror riffs. A murderous clown prince of crime? A gigantic crocodile man? A dude psychopathically obsessed with riddles? Let’s face it, Gotham City has long been one scary movie with a bunch of freaks running around, including the man dressed as a bat.
“Clayface” centers on one of the more obscure characters on that dastardly list, taking a baddie that hasn’t been done a lot on screen (outside of the 1990s animated series), immersing him fittingly in Cronenbergian body horror and creating sort of a superhero version of “The Substance.”
Yet director James Watkins’ unnerving, frustrating thriller (★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters Oct. 23) can only do so much melting
Tom Rhys Harries’ sharp features amid a bunch of creepy scenes and a severe lack of character development, and the film doesn’t add that much to the expanding DC universe either.
Movie star Matt Hagen (Harries) is on the rise in Coast City – DC’s fictional equivalent to LA and Hollywood – with adoring fans and a shiny new Oscar nomination. He returns home to Gotham, where a night out with his best friend (Joshua James) goes very badly: Matt has a one-night stand with the girlfriend of a powerful Gotham mob boss (David Dencik), who in return carves up the A-lister’s handsome mug with a switchblade.
Matt’s personal and professional lives spiral downward from there, betrayed by those around him, and he winds up back in the sketchy Narrows part of Gotham where he came from. Desperate to fix his face, Matt reaches out to Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) and becomes a human test subject for her AI-powered regenerative nanocells. These things get injected into him and seem to be a miracle cure until his cheeks and jawline inexplicably droop unnaturally.
That just won’t do for Matt's career comeback, so he overdoes it on the experimental treatment, which turns his entire body into a malleable substance akin to Silly Putty. While not ideal from a medical perspective, it allows Matt to literally become anyone he wants, which is exceedingly helpful when trying to exact revenge on people who’ve wronged you. Matt also has the hots for Caitlyn, whose cop boyfriend (Max Minghella) is investigating a sudden rash of murders in Gotham, and she becomes increasingly worried about her patient's bizarre behavior.
“Clayface” is at its gory best when going gloriously for the outrageous. One icky scene finds Matt using scissor pliers in an airplane bathroom trying to cut open his liquidy eye lids during some nasty turbulence. And there’s some gleeful over-the-top mayhem a la “Malignant” when Matt uses his transformative abilities during a violent night out at the club.
While Harries gives a complicated human touch to all the assorted versions of Matt’s internal strife and external facade (boosted by some excellent effects work), Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini’s screenplay does almost nothing with him as a character. But he’s not the only one – everybody’s just kind of a mediocre archetype. It's head-scratching given fleeting hints to a "rags-to-riches" backstory, a rich history in DC Comics lore and "The Penguin" just hanging out there as the perfect template on how to redo a Bat-villain.
"Clayface" also is the one Batman-adjacent project that, strangely, doesn’t utilize Gotham itself as a character. Compared to the art deco weirdness of Tim Burton’s take or Chicago-style majesty of Christopher Nolan’s iteration, it's a pedestrian place with almost no personality. Not a great look, honestly, for the new DCU’s first trip to an iconic locale.
Unlike the Marvel movies, “Clayface” follows “Supergirl” in standing by being standalone rather than a world-building effort. Give them credit, horror hasn’t been the focus of a ton of comic-book movie jams. But if you’ve got a decent supervillain thespian, why not give him a stage?
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Clayface' at least gets the gore right in messy DC miss – Review
