A rising Hollywood star becomes a grotesque shapeshifting monster after a mobster disfigures his face in Clayface, the latest entry in DC’s expanding cinematic universe under James Gunn now playing in Prague cinemas. Director James Watkins delivers a surprisingly effective body-horror thriller here, featuring terrific practical effects, a compelling central performance and a tangible realization of Gotham City. But while the film works beautifully as a gruesome revenge story, like Sony’s Spider-Man-less villain movies, it struggles to reconcile its sympathetic protagonist with the comic-book supervillain he’s inevitably destined to become.
Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, an Oscar-nominated actor whose career is about to take off when a visit to his hometown of Gotham goes disastrously wrong. After spending the night with a woman who turns out to be involved with local crime boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik), Matt is brutally attacked by the gangster, who takes a switchblade to his face.
For an actor whose livelihood depends on his appearance, the damage is devastating. His career evaporates, his friends and associates abandon him, and Gotham’s corrupt institutions offer little hope of bringing his attacker to justice. Desperate to regain his former life, Matt turns to Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a scientist developing an experimental treatment capable of regenerating damaged tissue.
The treatment initially works wonders, restoring Matt’s face to its former appearance. But the miracle comes with an increasingly horrifying side effect: His body begins to lose its structural integrity, eventually allowing him to reshape his features into virtually any form imaginable. But Matt soon discovers that these abilities might also prove useful in settling a few old scores.
The screenplay, developed by horror specialist Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, establishes a surprisingly compelling foundation for a comic-book villain origin story. Matt is neither a particularly admirable person nor someone who deserves his terrible fate, and the film carefully positions us to sympathize with his desire for revenge.
Harries is excellent in the lead role, giving Hagen a mixture of movie-star arrogance, wounded vulnerability and increasingly desperate determination. Even as his behavior becomes more troubling, the actor maintains enough humanity beneath the prosthetics to keep us invested in his predicament. It’s the kind of performance that can make or break a film like this, and Harries carries Clayface through stretches that might otherwise collapse under the weight of their own absurdity.
Ackie is equally convincing as Caitlyn, whose scientific curiosity gradually gives way to genuine concern for her patient. Their developing relationship provides an emotional counterweight to the escalating grotesquerie, even if the screenplay occasionally relies on familiar mad-scientist conventions to move things forward. Max Minghella appears as Caitlyn’s police detective boyfriend, while Eddie Marsan and Joshua James play figures from Matt’s former life who prove considerably less loyal than he once imagined.
The real attraction here is the extraordinary effects work, which becomes progressively more elaborate and stomach-churning as Matt’s transformation accelerates. Watkins (Eden Lake, Speak No Evil), has a firm grasp of the material’s physical horror; the initial facial mutilation is unpleasant enough, but the subsequent transformations push the film into wonderfully disgusting territory, with skin stretching, collapsing, bubbling and melting in ways that feel disturbingly tangible.
There’s something genuinely unsettling about watching a recognizable human face lose its familiar structure, especially when the effects allow us to see the physical consequences of every transformation. A particularly nasty sequence involving Matt’s deteriorating face aboard an airplane is a small masterpiece of sustained discomfort, while a climactic melting moment leaves an unforgettable final impression.
Working on a considerably smaller scale than the typical superhero blockbuster proves advantageous. There’s no need for elaborate world-building or endless references to other DC characters, and the city’s criminal underworld provides a sufficiently threatening environment without a caped crusader making an appearance. Gotham feels like an actual city rather than an expensive digital playground, with Watkins and his cinematographer favoring grimy streets, shadowy interiors and convincing urban locations
The central revenge narrative raises some fascinating moral questions. Matt has suffered a horrific injustice, and the authorities have effectively abandoned him. We understand his anger, sympathize with his desperation and actively want him to punish the people responsible. But at what point does that desire for justice become something uglier?
There’s an obvious connection to revenge films like Death Wish, in which Charles Bronson’s vigilante becomes a vehicle for the audience’s own appetite for violent retribution. Clayface has the opportunity to push that discomfort further: Are we watching a fundamentally decent man become a monster, or does our willingness to cheer for his revenge reveal something monstrous about us?
Unfortunately, the film never quite commits to exploring that distinction. As Matt’s powers grow, the screenplay increasingly attributes his violent behavior to the monstrous transformation itself, muddying the relationship between his conscious choices and the perhaps supernatural forces supposedly taking control of him. Is he deliberately seeking revenge, or is his altered physiology driving him toward violence?
The ambiguity might have been productive if the film developed it more carefully. Instead, it often feels like a convenient mechanism for turning a sympathetic protagonist into the established Batman villain that comic-book continuity requires. This is where Clayface begins to resemble films like Morbius, Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter. Those movies struggled to build compelling narratives around characters traditionally defined by their relationship to a superhero, and Watkins’ film encounters a similar problem during its final act.
The difference is that Clayface has a genuinely engaging character and a strong revenge story before the demands of the supervillain origin begin to interfere.
Clayface may not fully reconcile its ambitions as a tragic character study with its obligations as a DC villain origin story, but it’s a thoroughly entertaining and frequently revolting piece of genre filmmaking. When it embraces the grotesque possibilities of its premise rather than worrying about the larger superhero universe, it’s a wonderfully nasty little monster movie. And in an era of increasingly weightless comic book films, there’s something especially satisfying watching one willing to get its hands this dirty.
