Clayface Review: DC Studios’ Genre-Bending Superhero Film Misfires

Some superhero movies have a dull, two-dimensional villain, but you get through them because you like the hero. Think of Iron Man 2 or Thor: The Dark World. Now picture one of those movies without the beloved superhero. That’s a pretty good sense of what it’s like to watch DC‘s terrible new Clayface, an underwhelming story filled with uninteresting characters.

James Watkins directed the film, which is based on a story by Mike Flanagan. It follows up-and-coming actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries). His handsome face and recent best actor nomination have made him the talk of the town. He had a rough childhood in Gotham but overcame the odds to become a success. Then he sleeps with the wife of a mob boss, who retaliates by slicing up his face.

Hagen undergoes a series of surgeries to save his life, but his reconstructed face is grotesque. Without his movie star looks, his career quickly collapses. His agency drops him, his lawyer steals money from him, and he has to move back to his crappy Gotham apartment. Then he hears about an experimental procedure developed by Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) that promises to restore his appearance with “nanocells.” At first it works. Over time, the nanocells malfunction and give Hagen a monstrous, melting appearance. They also give him the ability to shape-shift into anyone he chooses.

What’s wrong with Clayface?

For the first 15 or 20 minutes, Clayface zips along at a breakneck pace that feels almost apologetic. It’s as if the filmmakers knew they had nothing interesting to say before Matt gets disfigured, so they hurried to that point. They should have used that time to show us who Matt is before the life-changing incident. The pace is so fast that it’s hard to get a good picture of him.

I think the filmmakers had two options. They could have written a sympathetic Matt Hagen whose life is torn apart. Or they could have written a jerk who gets his comeuppance but is so engaging or funny that we can’t look away. The movie does neither. Matt comes off as a dull, shallow Hollywood phony, so Clayface becomes a revenge story about a character you can’t root for.

Nobody else in the movie is especially engaging either. After Matt, the biggest disappointment is David Dencik as mob boss Markos Szabo, who slices up Matt and becomes the target of Matt’s revenge plot. Maybe recent decades have spoiled us with Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins), John Turturro (The Batman) and Clancy Brown (Penguin) as Gotham’s crime bosses. Still, Dencik feels small in the role, as if he can’t quite fill the suit of a believable tough guy.

Naomi Ackie probably does the best work in the film as the scientist trying to help Matt. The movie hints at a half-baked love story, or at least an attraction, between her and Matt, but I never wanted them to end up together. I found myself rooting for her to stay with Max Minghella’s character instead. He plays a rare honest Gotham cop, and at times the film seems to want us to care about him. He never gets enough to do for that to happen.

Why does this movie even exist?

The one redeeming quality is that the film sold itself as body horror, and it somewhat delivers. There is some good, cringey, gross, hard-to-watch body horror in there. But it never feels like a horror movie, and nothing in it actually scares you. It’s a superhero movie without a superhero. What the filmmakers did with the character of Clayface may have worked fine inside a Batman movie. On its own, there’s nothing to sink your teeth into, and I was outright bored for much of the film.

Going in, I couldn’t help wondering why the movie exists and why it’s being made now, before the Batman of James Gunn’s DC Universe has even been established. As with Supergirl, it feels like it has come too early in a still-developing universe. Say what you will about Marvel and its missteps, but it knew which characters to prioritize up front. Maybe Marvel did that too well, because after Avengers: Endgame it mostly felt like leftovers. For some reason, Gunn’s DC Universe seems to be serving its leftovers right up front, which is much, much worse.

Source: Polygon