Perhaps the centerpiece sequence of grotesque transformation in Clayface, which is an origin story about the DC Comics villain, says a lot more about the limitations of this movie than one suspects its makers realized while conceptualizing it—mainly on account of a grievous structural error that was easy to overlook. The scene has been featured in the movie’s advertisements, but there really is no way to describe the giddy, gory pleasure of seeing our antihero trying to sever, using scissors, his own melted eyelid flesh while in the restroom aboard a plane headed through a spot of turbulence. There is also no more disappointing realization than the fact that, aside from our squirms of discomfort, no actual suspense or tension accompanies this moment.
Again, it’s likely something was lost in translation along the way here, but the moment comes quite literally just after Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), the famous and handsome actor who now finds himself in a curious situation regarding the mutated cells in his body, finds out that any sort of damage to any part of him will heal instantaneously—not only repairing the damaged flesh but somehow restoring lost blood back into the veins. Yes, one of the side effects of the medical experiment that led to this result is a stretching of the skin, hence the need, in that moment, to sever the excess of it. That’s all we’re watching, though—a gross moment because director James Watkins wanted to give us one.
The movie as a whole feels a little bit like that missed opportunity, if only on a slightly grander scale. At first, the construction of this relatively low-key thriller seems more like a character study of a well-liked and popular man, pushed to the brink by an unthinkably violent act. All that Matt Hagen was guilty of doing was returning the flirtatious advances of a woman at a nightclub: He could never have known she was a gangster’s moll (played by Joana Ribeiro), nor that the crime boss himself (played by David Dencik) would go to such lengths as to have his goons carve deep gashes into Matt’s face.
Any man with the resources and the money to seek out a medical experiment to quicken the process of repairing those wounds would, of course, do so, which means that the early stretch of Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini’s screenplay gives us a protagonist whom it is quite easy to like. Matt does, indeed, seek the help of Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a scientist specializing in restorative nanotechnology whose latest breakthrough is bound to change things in medicine forever—if, of course, the right hands receive it with the best of intentions. Matt’s desperation leads to what is almost certainly an unwise self-inoculation of the vial of nano-riddled liquids, and, well, here we are.
The rest of the movie is, unfortunately, not nearly as interesting as these early parts are, with Matt coping with the newfound regenerative capabilities that the concoction gives him, which result in scenes like the one on the plane or the first brush with it at a film premiere, where he counts on the shock of his good looks, arriving so quickly after a heavily publicized attack, to send a message to the right people. Those would obviously be the crime boss, his goons and his girl, and the opportunists in Matt’s own personal circle, all of whom are now targets of his rage and some payback. Yes, the movie just becomes a fairly standard revenge picture.
The move feels about as random as some of the background details that establish this story to take place in or near Gotham City, because of course, this character may eventually cross paths with a certain caped crusader in this questionably extended cinematic universe. Considering how we meet him, the finale feels especially random, but then it sort of becomes easy to understand why the movie becomes what it is. It’s a sign and a symptom of pure obligation on the part of filmmakers who have no other choice but to make the character colloquially known as Clayface (though the moniker is never spoken here) into the kind of villain that could be a foil for Batman on account of his ruthlessness (a couple of suffocations feel like cruel overkill, though the main comeuppance is, admittingly, as satisfying as it is disturbing).
We get there eventually, if also suddenly, in a rush of forced climactic confrontations seeking to conclude the major conflict involving the organized crime ring, the half-considered romance that develops between Matt and Caitlyn, and the events that lead to Matt’s final form—a thoroughly unconvincing monster of rubbery digital creation. Clayface is a study of disappointment delivered in increments.
Rating: ** (out of ****)
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