Anil Krishna 
Jonathan Millar 
James Oconner 
Clayface Embraces Body Horror, but There’s More to This Batman Villain Than His Changing Face
© Warner Bros. Pictures
DC Studios has finally taken a proper swing at horror with Clayface, and for the most part, it works. The film gets pretty nasty when it wants to, but what really holds it together is Tom Rhys Harries, who makes Matt Hagen feel like a real person before everything goes horribly wrong.
Clayface has been around since the 1940s, and the character has gone through quite a few changes over the years. His original comic-book incarnation, Basil Karlo, was an actor and makeup artist inspired by old Hollywood horror stars like Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone. He used his skills to get revenge, which was bad news for pretty much everyone around him. James Watkins’ new film, though, focuses on Matt Hagen, probably the version most people associate with the character today.
Hagen starts out as a Hollywood star who seems to have everything going for him. Think Leonardo DiCaprio during his early-2000s heartthrob years: young, famous, ridiculously good-looking, and now an Oscar nominee to boot. He celebrates the nomination with his friends, but there’s a quieter moment too, when he raises a toast to his late mother. It’s a small scene, but it tells us something about the person underneath all that celebrity shine.
Harries gets this side of Hagen right. There’s a certain ease to him, the sort of confidence you’d expect from someone who’s used to being the most interesting person in the room. And yes, a lot of that comes down to his face. Hagen has the kind of million-dollar smile that gets people talking, including Mia Torrez (Joana Ribeiro), a rising actress who’s involved with the very unpleasant Marko Szabo (David Dencik), a mobster who isn’t exactly known for handling rejection well. Things spiral from there, and Hagen’s face, the one thing he can never afford to lose, is brutally destroyed.
Clayface doesn’t waste much time getting to the ugly stuff. We’re barely ten minutes in when Szabo’s blade leaves Hagen horribly disfigured. Not long after that, Hagen turns to Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who’s working on experimental smart cells that can supposedly repair damaged tissue. Caitlyn needs publicity and funding for her research, and treating a famous actor seems like a pretty good way to get both. So she takes Hagen on as a test subject. You can probably guess that this is not going to end well, though the film has some fairly gruesome ways of showing just how badly things can go wrong.
Matt Hagen’s Face Is Only Part of the Problem
The obvious horror in Clayface comes from what happens to Hagen’s body, but the film is also interested in what losing his face does to him mentally. Acting is his career, his identity, practically his whole life. Take that away, and what exactly is left? When he discovers that he can change his appearance and imitate other people, the idea of performance takes on a much darker meaning. For an actor who has spent years making a living by becoming someone else, the ability suddenly becomes something far more dangerous.
The film doesn’t dig into all these ideas as much as it could have. It raises questions about identity, fame and the masks people wear, then sometimes moves on before there’s much time to sit with them. Still, there’s a decent character drama hiding underneath all the blood and melting flesh. We also get hints of Hagen’s troubled past, including some damaging secrets that Szabo digs up to ruin him. Hagen insists that the stories aren’t true, but the film leaves enough doubt to make you wonder whether he’s telling the whole truth.
Mike Flanagan, whose earlier work includes The Haunting of Hill House and Carrie, developed the original screenplay, while Hossein Amini worked on the script. It’s tempting to think Flanagan’s version might have spent more time on Hagen’s family history, especially since Aaron Paul’s brief appearance as Matt’s father feels like a piece of a much larger story that never quite makes it into the film. Whatever the reason, the family trauma angle doesn’t get much room here.
That actually works in the film’s favour in one important way. Clayface is a tragedy, but it doesn’t use Hagen’s past as an excuse for everything he does. A bad childhood might explain certain things about a person, but it doesn’t automatically make them innocent. The film seems to understand that, and it doesn’t go out of its way to make Hagen look better than he is.
By the third act, there’s little doubt that Matt has made some terrible choices of his own. He’s not simply a good man pushed too far, and the film doesn’t try to sell him as one. That’s a welcome decision, particularly in an era when almost every famous villain seems to need a sympathetic backstory. Hagen can be a victim and still be responsible for the person he becomes.
Harries does much of the heavy lifting here. He’s convincing as the charming star who seems to have life figured out, and just as convincing when Hagen is scared, desperate and willing to try almost anything to get his old face back. Watching that desperation turn into something uglier is probably the best part of his performance. The script does stumble in places, especially with the subplot involving Caitlyn’s fiancé, Detective John Borelli (Max Minghella). His part of the story feels as though it belongs in a different movie, and the romantic drama around him never really fits with the nastier things happening elsewhere.
The Body Horror Works, Though the Film Could Have Gone Further
A performance like Harries’ deserves a film that’s willing to take a few more risks. Watkins, who directed Speak No Evil, certainly gives us some memorable images. There’s the living, throbbing tissue in Caitlyn’s lab, the failed procedures meant to repair Hagen’s face, and a handful of kills that get properly uncomfortable. One in particular, near the end, is hard to forget. The film has a knack for making you want to turn away just as you find yourself leaning closer to the screen.
That said, anyone who’s spent time with David Cronenberg’s films or watched The Substance may come away wanting more. Clayface gets bloody, but it doesn’t always push its body horror as far as it could. Some of the transformations are genuinely disturbing, yet there’s a sense that the film keeps pulling back just when things might get really wild. The same goes for its ideas about identity and the way Hagen uses other people’s faces. There’s plenty to work with, but not all of it gets explored properly.
You can see the film reaching for something more ambitious, and every now and then it gets there. The climax takes Hagen back to the nightclub where he first met Mia, bringing the story around to the place where so much of his downfall began. His final transformation is grotesque in the best possible way, and the sequence has a visual confidence that isn’t always present elsewhere in the film. These are the moments that make you wish the whole movie had been this daring.
Even with its uneven screenplay and a few storylines that never quite come together, Clayface is a worthwhile addition to the DC universe. It doesn’t squeeze every last bit of potential out of its central character, and the horror could have been pushed further, but there’s something refreshing about seeing a comic-book movie commit to such an unpleasant, strange corner of its world. James Gunn’s approach to DC Studios has left room for filmmakers to try different genres rather than forcing every story into the same mould, and this film is a pretty good argument for keeping that freedom.
Clayface isn’t a perfect horror movie, or even the definitive version of the character. But it has a strong lead performance, some properly revolting imagery and enough ambition to stand apart from the usual superhero fare. For a film about a man who loses his face and slowly loses himself along with it, that’s a decent place to start.
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