Movie Review: Clayface

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review.

From months ago into the summer, I covered DCU’s Supergirl, which while its good, but flawed for certain degrees from nearly deviating from the comic as well creative control from behind the scenes (at least from what I’ve heard). Which despite it received and okay review, but it unfortunately got flopped at the box-office, which personally, it wasn’t because of serious competitor films, its because Im flat out BLAMING at the DCEU/Snyder Cults for their toxic fuming against the current DC Studios and such (no wonder why Milly Alcock deleted her promotions of Supergirl based on cancerous toxic community, but that’s just me for the latter). But that doesn’t means DCU is over, they’re still have more projects they’re working on, including one particular film that left me curious and anticipated that I wanna put this into Halloween Special Edition, but delayed from… My schedule conflict, again, that’s just me.

“Clayface” is a 2026 body horror-psychological thriller film that was directed by James Watkins, produced by Matt Reeves (Yup, the same guy who gave us The Batman), Lynn Harris, James Gunn, and Peter Safran, and written by Mike Flanagan, and Hossein Amini.

The idea of this movie went back in the dying days of DCEU, where Mike Flanagan wanted to make a movie about one of Batman’s Rogues Gallery, Clayface. Its all because he was inspired by the two-part episode of Batman: TAS called “Feat of Clay”, especially he loves Clayface’s portray on this show. So came up the idea to make a movie about Clayface, but leaning towards horror to be more violent and disturbing, however, when he brought up his idea, it was pretty much came out of nowhere and DC just “didn’t bite on” his idea. Of course, around after Discovery and WB were merged in April of 2022 (even if it was doomed from the start, but its a long story, even if I mentioned it in my review of Coyote vs ACME), it will be an opportunity to bringing Clayface into soft-rebooted DCU. Though technically, it was originally intended to be a spinoff either a movie or TV show that shared in Matt Reeves’s world of The Batman, but it left a lot of skepticism whether or not if Clayface project is going to be in DCU or in The Batman universe, even if DCU were already introduced Clayface in the animated series “Creature Commandos” with Alan Tudyk voiced the character for the second time since 2019 Harley Quinn show (which I recommend this show how Bat-S(bleep) insane it is, but fun). But after all the discussion, Clayface was greenlit and being part of DCU, while The Batman universe is part of “DC Elseworlds”. Although they might have a changing plans such as they changed the campy horror into body horror film due to taking aspect from David Cronenberg’s The Fly and Mike Flanagan was originally going to be both writer and director of this movie, but decided to be credited as a writer, due to his commitment on both The Exorcist: Martyrs and the miniseries came out in the same year, Carrie, leaving James Watkins being hired as the director.

So, with all that said, can Clayface could be a recovery career, or is this an experimental gone wrong to looking like an abomination?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

For their depiction of Matt Hagen, you think they gave us something more disturbing, mature and graphical for his origin story? Well, I think they did pretty good, for the most part.

The movie immediately begins on the way from flying into Gotham City where we introduce the most successful actor, Matt Hagen for not just his performance, but also his handsome look for viewers and the ladies. Once he got nominated for Best Actor from Academy Award,, he’s excited to hopefully he can win. But in one faithful day at the party, he meets an actress named Mia Torrez, who at first, seems to be lively and congratulating him, but it turned out to be a setup to kidnapping him after drugged him, where Mia’s boyfriend and the mob boss, Markos Szabo tortures Matt by brutally disfiguring him with a knife. Despite Matt has been taken to the hospital for repairing his face in surgery, but it didn’t worked out after surgery how he looked. But at the same time, after report to the Gotham City Police Department, he didn’t received any evidence and how messy and corrupt GCPD really is, leaving Szabo came out scot-free and Mia gaslights everyone on live TV that he drugged her, causing Matt being completely pissed how he looks and being falsely accused with crimes got away with it. That is until he sees an ad of a miracle medical from fringe scientist named Dr. Caitlyn Corr, which he thinks that this could be an opportunity to clearing his look to the public thanks Dr. Corr’s medical development with nanite, which this advanced substance will rapidly healing the skin and tissues. After the injection, Hagen is happy to be back to normal, but not good enough that his face is melting, demanding for more cure, but in complete desperation, he overloading the substance in quickly as he can, but the downside is that he’s developing shapeshifting abilities in clay-like mutation, its up to Matt to figuring out how he’s trying to control himself and get off his grudge against the mob.

I will say, its a pretty nice with disturbing and mature fashion for their origin story about the unfortunate actor with shapeshifting substance, even if its meant to healing his appearance. It goes into point of view on Matt for how we goes from promising actor to fallen down with nanite substance that turn his life completely upside down, especially for possibly using his ability with violence as the answer. Though the downside is that it tries to give Matt Hagen a chemistry with Dr. Corr as a new relationship, despite she’s taken from police detective John Borrelli, who’s trying to connect about the attack or even the casualties, while Hagen hides his own vengeful skin. Another issue it has, is the lackluster appearance of Szabo and his mob group, but il save the characters later. Though il give credit what they tried for their own revision of Clayface’s origin in comparison, whereas in the comic (or Batman: TAS), Hagen (or Basil Karlo, depending on adaptations) where after being disfigured, he puts a blood sample from creature or an unusual makeup that turning himself into shapeshifting monster. Here, its an advanced nanite substance for clearing up his face, in body horror fashion, they’re both rather similar, but different setting or vision, im not gonna go on for which one is better between the original backstory and the movie version, you guys can make your conclusion in the comment bellow.

While its not the perfect writing due to minimal of characters (again, more on that later), change about the substance and simple vengeful story, but its a pretty nice for the dark and graphical time for Hagen’s origin story.

The Presentation

The movie’s budget is much lower than Supergirl (the less said about the flop, the better), it costed between $30M to $44M to make, which I will say, they did a nice work what they’ve tried in disturbing and probably gory way (sort of).

For starter, based on looking at DCU’s presentation of Gotham City (no relation to Reeve’s The Batman’s setting, which it looks like dark and dirty version of New York), I first though they filmed there in Detroit, Michigan, cause I think Detroit as Gotham City could fit in based on its chaos and some corrupt. But in reality, it was actually filmed in England, especially they filmed in the same location since The Batman, mainly Liverpool and couple others. Whether or not if its coincidence, but then again, they hired Matt Reeves when it was originally intended to be a spinoff movie of The Batman, but I digress. Though unlike Supergirl and The Batman, if they wanna save their budget, they pretty much stayed in England to film rather than going out further like Scotland. Though its understandable, but I think some shots looks pretty good for its view, dark, slum and messy based on how chaotic and possibly corrupt is in Gotham City. Sure there are some shots outside of Gotham like the beach, which I assumed it was filmed in New Brighton and the opening before arriving in Gotham City. Of course, several soundstage works were all done and filmed in Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden.

As for the effects, I find couple of them are pretty nice, most of them were done via practical effects when Hagen is in surgery, especially with makeup job from scar tissues and some either falling face or even face covered, sure some are done with CG, depending on his transformations and using hardened clay or sharps as his own weapons. While they did a good job for the effects, but other times it can get some weird moments, such as how Hagen has the ability to disguising as people around him like a decoy, it would be fine to show us his clay-like transformation in disturbing way, but again, in order to save money, they pulled a quick transformation effects, which didn’t translate well for human disguise compared Batman TAS’s “Feat of Clay”. But its understandable that Feat of Clay isn’t the only one that got inspired for the effects, there’s Cronenburg’s The Fly which is purposely made to be a body horror based on Hagen’s body evolution, along with taking old movies from 30s and 50s for facial cover or even facial scarring like The Invisible Man in 1931, House of Wax in 1953 and Frankenstein, also in 1931.

As for the actions, the horror and even the violence, I find them to be either creative, disturbing and of course, gory. Whether be one scene where Hagen stalks one of Szabo’s goon to take a brutal kill with his hand turning into clay-like mace (despite im disappointed that its only off-screen), the climatic bar fight, a remorseful suffocation of death into the chest or probably the most brutal and uncomfortable scenes of all, is the torture scene where Hagen gets cut on his face by Szabo after being kidnapped, or even the surgery scene, which hospital surgery is fine with putting scar tissues, but when they’re doing a nose part is so graphical that I nearly looked away (Don’t worry guys, I didn’t throw up while watching this scene. But good lord, despite they did a good job for the effects, I can’t keep my eyes on that part!).

Despite some hiccup effects that im nitpicking at, but the presentation looks nice what they’ve done as DCU’s low budget film, especially they made it, again, pretty disturbing and gory. You heard that, Sony?! DC Studios did it right!

The Characters

While the writing aren’t as perfect, you think the characters could give us something promising and maybe even likable or sympathetic for unfortunate origin story? Well, we have some, but the list of characters is, shockingly minimal.

Lets start with our titular protagonist, Matt Hagen, aka Clayface (played by Tom Rhys Harries), as we all know, he started off as a famous movie actor for not just his acting performance, but also how handsome he is both on screen (depending on makeup for various movies) and public. But once he was captured and brutally tortured, leaving him becoming a tragic and vengeful man for the sake of repairing his image and clearing his name based on mob’s gaslight on TV. I find him to be rather descent man, even if he plays more like an antihero to clearing his names and desperation to get himself back to the glory, without knowing about his clay-like mutation abilities to using violence as the answer. I like to give credit that it gives his development based on emotions of grief (aka five stages of grief, or DABDA), where he goes in emotional depth (without the death element, kinda) after being tortured and poorly surgery, he went to denial that he argues that its not true for their gaslight report, thus made himself into anger that he lost everything after the court to clearing his name and not-so good surgery, after that he goes bargaining that, upon meeting Dr. Corr with advanced substance to repair his look, he’ll hopefully get himself back, desperately. Not before he takes someone down and desperate to get along with Dr. Corr, he’s becoming depressed (and questioning) for what he’s done for his responsibility to throwing his love from the past away, until he eventually Accepting himself for what he becomes (though I won’t give SPOILER detail for what happened for the latter). Not to mention, he kinda has a similar journey as Eddie Brock in Venom movie, but again at least the execution has done well, unlike how Sony handled it in a broken down tone. Not to mention, I think Tom Rhys did a pretty good work of his role based on his written role about Hagen’s rollercoaster journey, beside his sacrificed to act with torn ACL he had (Ouch…! But still, at least he committed).

And lastly is Dr. Caitlyn Corr (played by Naomi Ackie, aka Jannah in Star Wars: Thr Rise of Skywalker), she’s a fringe scientist who helps Hagen with her experiment to healing his face to get himself back to the glory. I find her to be fairly decent, she’s responsible for plot convenience to introducing her experiment for advanced heal substance. However, she’s also gives Matt a dangerous drawback with saying “Be careful what you’re wishing for”, cause her date will finding out otherwise. Even though I never heard her, but I think she did a nice work of her performance for the way she was written to give Hagen a plot development for repairing his face.

Normally, I wanna talk about more than three characters in this movie, but again, its shockingly disappointing that the casting list is very minimal with a minimal development (sorta).

There’s Markos Szabo (played by David Dencik) is the mob leader who’s responsible for torturing Hagen’s look after kidnapping him, but it would’ve been great to see him more for his evil scheme, John Borrelli (played by Max Minghella) is Dr. Corr’s date and police detective who’s trying to find any evidence about the torture and the mysterious casualties, Corey Bowery (played Joshua James) who’s Matt Hagen’s best friend since their good’ol days of acting, and Mia Torrez (played by Joana Ribeiro) who’s Szabo’s girlfriend and responsible for drugging Matt for kidnapping.

However, there’s one surprising casting choice that I didn’t notice is they originally intended to bring Matt’s father, Jimmy Hagen (played by none other than Aaron Paul, aka Jesse Pinkman!). Though we only saw him at the nightclub briefly, but according to the original plan, Jimmy was supposed to be onscreen further in a flashback scene that he’s depicted as a mean-spirited abusive father on poor little Matt, but that idea was cut due to more focus on body horror rather than a generational trauma. That really sucks for what would’ve been to give more development for Matt Hagen for how or why’s possibly emotional struggle, but that’s just me.

Its a damn shame that rest of the characters are lackluster (along with one character for what would’ve been), its just that it leans toward Hagen himself and partially Dr. Corr, but at least some of them have a good writing and good performances.

And now for my final opinion of this film.

Overall, Clayface is certainly have potential and probably better at the box-office than Supergirl. BUT, while Clayface is doing good at the box-office (so far as im writing this), that doesn’t mean its all perfect.

It has a very good filming view, it has some good effects, the writing is decent, some characters are good too and the acting are also good, especially with the emotion arc for our main protagonist. But it does have some very good actions and the violence have some creative and brutal kills and makeup with scars and post-surgery are nicely done, even if some moment that its uncomfortable to look at.

But the movie has some issues from iffy effects, the cast are very short compare to other movies we’ve watched, lackluster villain and its more learning towards Matt Hagen as a main focus.

Like I said, even though its not perfect for some execution, but I think its a pretty good one to give us more dark, disturbing and even gory take on one of the most trickiest and muddiest villain that Batman has to dealing with, which is something that Sony should’ve done right, but I won’t carrying away with the latter. For recommendation, I’d say go check this out if you’re a hardcore fan of DC contents, if you can stomach it as a body horror movie. But for non-DC fans, I’d say go watch it once and il leave you make your conclusion, and make sure you don’t act like those toxic DCEU fans out there, but again, I won’t drag this out longer.

For my rating, im gonna give this one… Lets say 7.5/10.

So this ends of my Movie Review, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.