CLAYFACE Review: Newly Revived DCU Saves Its Best for Third

Unfortunately, Flanagan’s numerous commitments, including the recent Carrie series for Amazon's  Prime Video and next year’s The Exorcist: Martyrs, removed him from consideration as director for the Clayface live-action film. As Flanagan departed the project, Hossein Amini entered to complete revisions. James Watkins, best known for 2024’s Speak No Evil remake, 2012’s The Woman in Black, and 2008’s Eden Lake, proved not just a competent replacement for Flanagan, but an inspired one. Watkins was more than willing to embrace the darker, more mature, adult-oriented approach Flanagan envisioned for the character.

 

That approach resulted in a well-earned R-rating: Gory, gruesome, gnarly body-horror that would make David Cronenberg wince in disgust or revulsion, and a standalone story centered on the fall, rise, and fall (again) of the title character, Clayface, aka Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), an up-and-coming actor, born and raised in the roughest parts of Gotham City (minus Batman or superheroes of any kind), who loses everything after a night filled with singularly bad choices, starting, but not ending with a sexual dalliance with Mia Torrez (Joana Ribeiro), a wannabe actress with an insanely jealous, switchblade-wielding mob boss, Markos Szabo (David Dencik), for a boyfriend.

 

Matt’s first, but by no means last, encounter with Markos leaves him horribly disfigured, his uneven face a mass of keloid scars, his acting career in tatters, and, after his unscrupulous business manager (Eddie Marsan) betrays a vulnerable Matt’s trust, his bank accounts empty. With criminal charges blocked by corrupt city officials, Matt sues Szabo in civil court. Losing there too, Matt’s left with nothing except bitter memories of the life he had and lost, the friends and business associates who abandoned him, and a keenly developed desire for revenge against everyone who’s wronged him. 

 

That rampage, when it comes, qualifies as righteous by almost any definition, but like one too many fictional and non-fictional vengeance seekers, the desire for revenge corrupts Matt’s soul. No longer a hero (if he ever was one), Matt becomes an anti-hero. No longer an anti-hero, Matt becomes the villain foreordained by his decades-long appearances in DC Comics. By turn tragic and monstrous, Matt begins a personal journey that ends, not with salvation, but its opposite: damnation.

 

Before we get to Matt’s righteous rampage of revenge, there’s plenty of narrative ground to cover. Desperate for a fix, any fix (an apt term), Matt turns to Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie, Mickey 17), an underfunded scientist working with cutting-edge nanotechnology to repair and replace faulty human cells. Although she’s far from clinical trials, Matt talks her into using him as her first human test subject. Matt hopes Caitlyn’s nanotechnology will heal his mangled face and broken psyche.

 

At first, it does, but like with any “mad scientist”-adjacent story, the experimental nanotech stops working when Matt needs it most, at an opening night celebration for a new play once slotted for Matt. Handsome again, Matt can’t help but show off his repaired face to press and fans alike, hoping an unexpected red carpet appearance will lead to positive press and, eventually, a return to the film roles he believes are rightfully his.

 

When the nanotech fails, Matt does what any test subject under the circumstances will do: He opts for maximum dosage, essentially OD’ing on Caitlyn’s nanotech. In short order, a newly reinvigorated Matt finds himself with an entirely different set of skills: Not only can he “act” like anyone else he encounters, but he can also change his physical appearance, too.

 

Echoing Sam Raimi’s underseen, underappreciated Darkman and, well before that, “The Four Of Us Are Dying,” a key S1 Twilight Zone episode, Matt discovers his new abilities aren’t consequence-free. In addition to his shapeshifting ability, Matt’s already fragile psyche begins to deteriorate well past the point of no return. Paralleling his body’s shapeshifting ability, Matt’s identity disintegrates as well, reforming as something “other,” no longer the Matt once driven by ego, entitlement, and ambition, but the “Clayface” of the title, driven into madness by bitterness, grievance, and resentment.

 

Fully embracing the outer limits of an R-rating, Watkins never turns the camera away from Matt’s horrifying experiences, showing Matt’s violation at the end of Szabo’s switchblade with nauseatingly gruesome realism. Later, when Matt undergoes one botched operation after another, Watkins keeps the camera close by, capturing every excruciating detail. Later still, when Matt loses control of his bodily changes, Watkins remains inches away. He refuses to look away and dares us, the audience, not to look away either. 

 

The visceral quality of those scenes — shout-out to Clayface’s practical effects team(s) — makes Matt’s eventual fall from hero to anti-hero to villain all the more difficult to accept, let alone embrace or applaud. Flanagan and Amini’s script handles that fall deftly, doling it out shot-by-shot, scene-by-scene, act-by-act until the unexpected becomes expected and the possible becomes inevitable. Matt doesn’t fall from grace all at once, but incrementally through a series of choices that, on their own, don’t necessarily qualify as “bad” or “ill-thought-out,” but collectively, they do. 

 

Clayface opens theatrically on Friday, October 23, via Warner Bros. Check the official site for local showtimes.