DC’s swing for the horror fences results in a strikeout rather than the desired home run
Clayface is the latest entry in the DC Universe, spearheaded by producers James Gunn and Peter Safran, and is directed by James Watkins (The Woman in Black, Speak No Evil) from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Doctor Sleep) and Hossein Amini (Drive, Snow White and the Huntsman). It tells the story of actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), an up and coming star whose meteoric success has recently seen him nominated for an Academy Award. After sleeping with the wrong girl during his celebrations, he is mutilated by a local mob boss and is left completely disfigured, taking away what he believes to be the most important part of himself; his beautiful face.
In his vain attempts to regain his looks, and subsequently his career, Matt volunteers for an experimental surgery with a local scientist, Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie). Caitlyn has been abandoned by her colleagues in her attempts to develop a regenerative procedure that will help those in need. Working on the fringes of science, her work is highly volatile and illegal, especially if she were to perform secret human trials. Won over by Matt’s story, Caitlyn decides she will operate and, after injecting him with a substance of regenerating cells over a number of sessions, the pair see Matt’s face wholly restored to its original, beautiful self.
Seemingly a miracle, the pair become friends and plan on monitoring the surgery’s success. However, at a red carpet event for a play that Matt was promptly replaced in, the actor makes a surprise appearance, much to the delight of the paparazzi. While basking in the limelight once more, Matt’s face seems to take a turn for the worse. It begins to seemingly melt off. After quickly returning to Caitlyn’s lab, Matt injects himself with the entirety of the substance, promptly resolving his problem, much to the dismay of Caitlyn. “I feel great, actually,” Matt exclaims. From here, and over the course of the film, Matt quickly morphs into the titular DC villain, known to fans as Clayface.
Unfortunately for Clayface, its setup is brisked through at a pace that makes it quite difficult to become involved or caring of Matt’s situation. It’s made clear that he’s a talented actor who loves his lavish life, but the speed in which the film gets to his attack never lets the stakes truly be felt. It’s nice that the film doesn’t mess around with too much fluff, however it’s a lack of character engagement that winds up hurting the overall product. This feeling of low stakes carries through the entire film, which in turn ends up making for a rather dull viewing experience, especially for a film that is taking such a swing with its genre in a sect (Comic Book Movies) that has become so homogenised and ‘samey’, for lack of a better word.
The entire film feels like a collection of scenes rather than a front-to-back story package. Often times, the scenes can feel as though they have been placed in the wrong order in respect to one another. It moves at a fast pace, constantly, however in doing so it never allows any of its frightening moments or character beats to breathe. Perhaps the most glaring example of this mishmash of moments is during the plane sequence, which has featured prominently in the film’s marketing.
The scene depicts Matt’s eyes closing against his will, as the cells injected in his body seem to be latching to one another and fusing his eyelids together. In a panicked attempt to regain his sight, he locks himself in the plane’s bathroom and takes to cutting the eyelids apart with a pair of scissors. The fear embedded within the scene comes from the plane going through bad turbulence, which makes Matt struggle and get the scissors a little too close to his eyes and face for comfort. The issue with the scene, however, is that the stakes aren’t actually felt, because two to three scenes prior, it is revealed that Matt cannot be injured and can heal almost instantaneously. During that scene, he takes to his own face with a razor and the blood immediately finds it’s way back into his body and the wounds heal without any damage.
It’s this constant struggle with itself that makes Clayface difficult to root for. It’s a film that is trying to swing for the fences through Watkins’ direction, however Flanagan and Amini’s writing consistently lets the film down. It’s got a nice look and feel to it, with Gotham city feeling appropriately grimy through Rob Hardy’s cinematography (if it doesn’t quite feel like its characteristic self), however its visuals are almost always undercut by a screenplay that doesn’t trust its audience. Too often does the film feel as though it is explaining its happenings to the audience, both through constant exposition as well as recaps of information that was just revealed, in case the audience wasn’t paying attention.
It’s character work is also extremely shallow. Harries does a good enough job as Matt Hagen/Clayface and Ackie is fine at best as Caitlyn, but the material they are given to work with doesn’t allow them to truly sink into their characters. Matt’s vanity and subsequent accident isn’t strong enough to love or hate him for what he sets out to do and Caitlyn’s hollow reasoning for experimenting on him is hardly reason enough to care for her side of the story. The pair also have a strange, romantic plot that progresses through the film, which is vapid at best.
The film also finds little confidence in its tone, with many of its horror elements falling flat. With a character as ripe as this for exploring the realm of body horror, Clayface’s attempts are unfortunately quite poor. There is a real inconsistency with Clayface himself, with a lot of the effects surrounding his powers being cut around or removed entirely. One moment will see his transformations slowly taking over his body, as the newly injected cells morph his face into that of someone entirely different, while the next moment will have his entire face, body and outfit change in the speed of a blink, often times feeling as though he simply swapped spaces with someone.
All of these aspects come together, much like Matt’s newfound cellular makeup, to form a grotesque glob more so than an exciting piece of work. It’s difficult to not want to root for a comic book movie such as Clayface, which takes a real swing with its genre and aesthetic, because more comic book movie’s should want to be different and stand out from one another. After all, that’s what so many comic books do. However, it’s really difficult to care when they fall this flat.
Clayface is in Australian cinemas now!