CLAYFACE REVIEW: DC GETS ITS HANDS DIRTY AND GETS IT RIGHT

DC Studios has delivered one hell of a body-horror movie with Clayface, and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. It's bloody, disturbing, well-acted, and manages to tell a complete story without spending half its runtime advertising the next one. When I wrote about the first Clayface trailer back in July, I was cautiously optimistic. Having seen the finished film, I can say that optimism was justified, including a few moments where I actually had to look away from the screen.

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose career is destroyed after getting involved with the wrong woman at a nightclub and having his face horribly disfigured. Desperate to get his old life back, he undergoes an experimental treatment that restores his appearance but eventually starts taking over his body and mind.

Here's the thing about Matt. He's already a bit of a douche before any of this happens, and his decision-making doesn't exactly improve. He gets involved with the wrong woman, then starts falling for Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), despite the fact that she's engaged. A couple of better decisions could have prevented this entire mess, but being a douche doesn't mean you deserve to have your face destroyed or your body slowly turn against you.

Harries is excellent as Hagen, managing to keep you sympathetic toward him even as his mind deteriorates and he begins embracing what he's becoming. Ackie is equally good as the doctor who clearly cares about him, possibly more than she's willing to admit. Max Minghella also delivers a strong performance as her fiancé, Gotham detective John Borrelli, who's investigating Hagen's attack and the growing number of deaths connected to him. The three performances give the movie a strong foundation before things start getting particularly nasty.

And when I say this movie delivers on the body horror, I mean it. The airplane sequence, where Matt attempts to cut his own eyelids open with scissors while the plane is experiencing turbulence, is particularly disturbing. Watching his body slowly betray him is uncomfortable enough, but combining that with his deteriorating mental state makes the whole thing considerably worse. I had to look away more than once, which doesn't happen to me very often.

My biggest complaint about the effects is how abruptly some of the transformations happen. One second Matt is himself, and the next he's somebody else. I'm sure avoiding those elaborate transformations helped keep the costs down, but I would have liked to see more of the actual changes taking place. That said, the big nightclub sequence toward the end takes full advantage of those rapid switches as Matt moves from person to person. It's a lot of fun, particularly once he's fully embraced his abilities and starts going after the people who wronged him.

The movie also pulls a bit of a Surf Dracula with Clayface's completed form. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it's when a story spends nearly its entire runtime building toward something, only to finally deliver it during the closing minutes. We get to see Clayface in his full monstrous glory for less than a minute. I was satisfied with the design, but a little more screen time would have been nice. Then again, did we really need two hours of the Golgothan Shit Monster from Dogma running around Gotham City? No sir, we did not.

One of the biggest surprises was how completely the movie works without Batman. Never once did I find myself wishing he'd show up, and that's something Sony never seemed to figure out with its Spider-Man spin-offs. The second Venom movie and Morbius were constantly teasing or referencing Spider-Man, almost as though their own characters weren't interesting enough to carry a movie. Clayface gives us a few surface-level nods to its comic-book origins and other DC productions, but it never feels obligated to remind us that Batman exists.

There is something a little strange about watching an entire movie featuring a Batman villain in Gotham City without Batman or another superhero even getting mentioned. But the fact that I never missed him is a pretty good indication of how well this particular story works on its own.

Visually, Clayface could easily fit into the Gotham City Matt Reeves established in The Batman. The atmosphere, the crime, and the overall look feel perfectly suited to that world, although we haven't really had an opportunity to explore the DCU's Gotham yet. There are also a couple of mentions of Coast City, which help establish the larger universe without interrupting the story for unnecessary cameos. I'm interested in seeing what else this version of Gotham has in store for us.

Mike Flanagan's writing is excellent, which is exactly what I've come to expect from him. You can tell he was interested in the character, and the screenplay gives Hagen's physical and psychological deterioration room to develop before turning him loose on the people who wronged him. James Watkins handles the direction just as well, delivering a movie that never drags or wears out its welcome. Thankfully, nobody decided this needed to be a two-and-a-half-hour comic-book extravaganza. It brings the blood, death, horror, and action, then knows when to wrap things up.

I was satisfied with the ending, particularly the nightclub sequence and the final Clayface reveal. By the time everything is over, Hagen seems ready to go off and do whatever Clayface does in Gotham City, and I'm perfectly fine leaving him there. I honestly don't need to see him again. Just knowing he's somewhere out there terrorizing Gotham might be enough, although I wouldn't object if he eventually turned up in another movie.

My complaints about the abrupt transformations and limited appearance of his final form are relatively minor compared with everything Clayface gets right. The acting is excellent, the writing is strong, and the body horror absolutely delivers. DC Studios gave one of Batman's strangest villains a movie that stands perfectly well on its own, and I had a great time watching it.