'Clayface' Almost Molds Itslef into Something Special
Here's the origin story of a villain where we don't feel sympathy for the bad guy, no matter how hard the director tries to make us. Or rather, the director's lack of effort to make us sympathize with the titular character. Clayface needs more backstory. His transition from actor to killer is too underdeveloped for us to care why he snaps. If the film focused on building up more than Matt Hagen's (Tom Rhys Harries) materialistic side, it could be something really special. Clayface has some great originality for its genre, but its simplified script keeps it from achieving greatness.
This movie may get a little more credit it deserves since it’s based on a comic book property but does something different with it. The movie is okay, but it’s missing core elements that would give its flat character something beneath the surface. The picture felt like an extended episode of Batman: The Animated Series that dives into Clayface’s past. Practically all the information from that episode is stretched out like a bloated cob of clay into one movie. Granted, this movie does have something narratively going for it, and that’s its love story.
The overall character building might be lacking, but the love story in this picture works rather well. Thanks to strong character choices, the movie is a fable about how love can make us do crazy things. Does love make us mad? Especially when we find out who someone really is? The movie ends on a strong note. But it takes a while to get there. The picture opens with a title card that looks like it was added at the last minute. Matt Hagen is a movie star who just got nominated for an Academy Award. His good looks got him to the top of the ladder, and now he’s about to fall. Mobster Markos Zsabo (David Dencik) needs to return a debt to Matt. What Matt did, or how he is involved with organized crime, is never explained or explored. They just kind of show up. Once Zsabo’s guys are done carving up Matt’s pretty face, he’s left with no work. In what seems to happen overnight, Matt Hagen goes from beloved icon to rejected trash.
Not only does Matt’s face get diced, but he is also canceled when he did nothing wrong. People go from loving Matt to reviling him after he gets brutally assaulted? Wouldn’t some of the public show support for him? At least those who don’t believe the falsified Me Too story about him? This sequence of events happens too quickly, as if the screenplay is adding conflicts rather than tying them neatly together. How does Matt lose millions of dollars overnight and have to move from the West Coast back into the narrows of Gotham?
To get his career back, Matt seeks an experimental miracle cure from Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie). Dr. Corr’s treatment can reshape tissue into the user’s choosing, letting them mold their face like clay into anyone they want. That wasn’t the experiment's intention, but Matt foolishly decided to do it himself. The movie plays itself like a mixture of Darkman and The Fly. A body-horror comic-book movie that will have you squirming.
The makeup in Clayface is fantastic. It’s the kind of self-mutilation that had the audience grabbing their mouths and covering their eyes. It’s a lot like when we pick off a zit, except with a razor blade. And a really big zit. Director Jamie Watkins uses Matt's shifting appearances as an old-school camera trick: Matt switches every time the camera cuts, only transitioning appearances occasionally on camera. It harkens back to the old practical-effects days before computers turned movies into cartoons, when filmmakers had to be creative instead of asking an exhausted team of animators to do the visuals for them.
He may not be a star yet, but Tom Rhys Harries has potential. Harries does a great job of playing emotionally torn, even if the script doesn’t give his character much perspective. From his brooding persona to his shyness and his strong cheekbones that look like they could be molded, Thom Rhys Harries was a fantastic cast as Clayface. If he hadn't carried the picture on his back, the movie wouldn’t work. Still, it comes slightly short of itself.
Although the performances, effects, and cinematography are great, the movie lacks strong motives. The film is trying to say something about narcissism being a curse, but it doesn’t explore what makes Matt tick other than physically deforming him. If Matt is a bad person from the start, the film should focus on why he’s selfish. Was Matt always a killer? Did he have it in him all along? Did the clay cells alter his personality too? Matt Hagen is the same jerk from the beginning of the picture to the end. Not for a single moment did I care what happened to him, because he’s a half-explored monster. His hopes are clear, yet his soul is missing. With a few touch-ups to sell us on the man instead of the makeup, Clayface could have been a DCU classic; the potential is there, but it falls short.
