I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting very much going into Clayface. I probably should have known better, since I’ve praised director James Watkins before and screenwriters Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini have both been on my radar for good reasons. Even so, I was expecting something on the order of Kraven the Hunter. So I’m delighted to report that their origin story for the DC Comics villain plays like a male version of The Substance, and is better for it.
The filmmakers fashion a neat backstory from bits and pieces of different versions of the character from the comics. Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) is a Gotham native and small-time gangster’s son who turned to acting to escape that life, becoming an Oscar-nominated headlining movie star. High on success, he returns to his hometown, does drugs, and sleeps with a beautiful woman (Joana Ribeiro), despite being told that her boyfriend is mafia boss Markos Szábó (David Dencik). The Hungarian responds by pulling a switchblade and carving up Matt’s handsome face. His career and life in ruins, Matt seeks out a similarly down-on-her-luck biotech researcher (Naomi Ackie) and begs her for experimental therapy based on her work repairing damaged tissue. The treatment works and then some, at the price of Matt’s moral compass.
Watkins does not spare the gore in this R-rated film, especially when showing Matt’s reconstructive surgeries and his brutal murders of the people who have wronged him. When Matt realizes that the therapy is making his body heal itself, he slashes up his face just to watch it put itself back together. The director squeezes Substance-like body-horror jitters out of the deformations that happen with Matt, especially during a sequence on an airplane when his eyelids start closing up and he tries to cut them back open while the plane is experiencing severe turbulence.
That gnarly stuff rubs shoulders with some special-effects magic, as Matt discovers his newfound powers. After killing his business manager (Eddie Marsan) who stole all his money, he discovers that he now has the dead man’s face, which helps him get away from the crime scene. The superpower becomes quite effective during the climactic showdown when Matt shows up at Szábó’s nightclub wearing his own face to scare the mafia boss and his thugs, then crosses the dance floor by impersonating several other people. Szábó ends up seeing two versions of his right-hand man (Jake Curran) pointing guns at each other in his office. He shoots both of them, which shows some brains, but fails to save him. Somehow none of the X-Men films made such inventive use of Mystique’s similar superpower. (A number of different actors wind up portraying Clayface, and they manage to give off the impression being the same person underneath, which is cool.)
Clayface does miss its chance to comment meaningfully on male insecurities about appearance, the way The Substance did about female insecurities. Matt’s desperation to reclaim his beauty explains a number of stupid decisions that he makes, but the Welsh newcomer Rhys Harries doesn’t quite capture the vibe of a man who proclaims he would rather die than live with a disfigured face. Though he tries manfully, he doesn’t give off the effortless charisma of an A-list movie star, either. (Thus the acting honors are stolen away by Ackie as a doctor watching her patient become a monster.) For all that, this nifty comic-book adaptation establishes its villain, ends without tipping over into bombast or sentimentality, and distinguishes itself from its tamer DC brethren. We see a lot worse at the multiplex.
Clayface
Starring Tom Rhys Harries and Naomi Ackie. Directed by James Watkins. Written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. Rated R.
