“The people I trusted betrayed me. The justice system failed me. They stole my career, my money, my life! I’m a monster.”
Each Halloween season I try to put in as many horror films as I can, starting with the old Universal classics. I then try to pull out films I haven’t watched in a few years. This year one of those was David Cronenberg’s remake of the Vincent Price classic The Fly. I ended up watch both films. I enjoyed them each for the kind of movie they were. What I did not know was I was preparing myself to see the latest in James Gunn’s new DCU Clayface. So far we haven’t seen anything for the new DCU Batman. The films with Robert Pattinson are “Elseworlds” films, which means they do not tie to the new DCU. But we finally have our first look into the Batman corner of this universe with an origin story about a popular Batman villain. We’ve had two Joker films. One was brilliant; the other was crap. This time the origin villain story goes out to Clayface. Honestly that seemed like an odd choice for me … that is,until I saw the film. I’m so glad I just watched Cronenberg’s The Fly, because it’s the closest thing I have seen to describe Clayface. If you love that film, you will love this one. Even many of the story beats get carried over. It’s a full-on body horror film about someone changed by a scientific experiment into something horrible and just bad to the bone.
“This is going to be hard to believe.”
It’s our first look at Gotham City and one of its prized citizens, Matt Hagen, played by Tom Rhys Harries. He’s a famous actor who has just been nominated for an Oscar. It’s a night for celebration, and that’s exactly what he does. While out drinking and dancing he hooks up with Mia, played by Joana Reberio. She has been teasing and flirting with him all night. He ends up falling for her seduction even after his best friend warns her that she’s the girlfriend of local mob kingpin Markos Szabo (Dencik), who is also a Batman villain. Matt’s reply is that she isn’t his tonight, and they go back to her room and do what young couples in lust do. But word’s gotten back to Szabo before the couple even wakes up, and he’s very unhappy. He slices Matt’s face to an absolutely horrid degree. Now the actor with the not-so-pretty face is getting dumped by everyone, from his agent to his friends and even the studios where just days ago he was on top of the world. He suffers through countless surgeries, but no one can make him look better than a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster. It appears to be all over.
Enter Dr. Caitlyn Corr, played by Naomi Ackie. She’s been a bit disgraced herself. She has developed a system of nano skin bots. But early human trials did not go very well, and now she’s thought of as a bit of a mad scientist herself. Matt hears about her work and makes contact. She is reluctant to work with him, too afraid of repeating the same mistakes. She doesn’t know for sure what the treatments will do for him. They are both kind of desperate, and that brings them back together and she gives Matt her treatment. At first it’s perfect. His face is completely restored, and he makes his grand entrance back in the limelight by crashing an industry party. Corr cautions him to wait, but he just can’t wait to show his great new/old face in the face of the people who spurned him. But Corr was right. It wasn’t ready, and the skin starts to run like melted wax, and he runs back to her office. Before she can research what is going, on he injects himself with her whole stock. It’s a kind of facelift OD. The result is he has his face back, but it comes at a huge cost.
The cost is that the skin is somewhat unstable, but he learns to use that to his advantage on a run of revenge and terror of his own. He finds that he can now shapeshift his entire body, and in less than a second. Using the ability, he wants to destroy all of the people who walked away from him and worse … those who hurt him. There’s a really clever and flawless scene back in the same bar where Matt walks through scenes in which his face and body, including clothes, shift instantly between people. The bar turns into his own private slaughterhouse, and I just love the editing here as the shapes change so you’re never sure who you are looking at. As a moviegoer that’s actually pretty sweet, but if you’re one of Matt’s enemies it’s not so sweet and usually ends quite bloody.
This is the DCU’s first attempt at a hard R, and it deserves it. These kills rival any horror franchise you’ve ever seen, and there is a lot of it. I give them credit for taking these kinds of chances, and while the film has some holes, it moves too fast for you to ask too many questions. We don’t see the full-on Clayface comic character until very late in the movie, and not for long, but the film does the look justice. The film drew a divided chat among credits when it was over, but I honestly really liked it. There are a lot of chances taken here, and this film is so much better than the recent Superman and way better than Supergirl.
All of the performances here are really good, but I have to hand it to Tom Rhys Harries here. He does some wonderfully subtle things with his face to give us some fun moments. Sometimes it’s just a slight puff out here or a slight pulling in of his facial muscles. This could have really been an unplanned comedic disaster with the wrong person in the role, but Davies is sometimes spooky without any makeup f/x.
If you’re looking for other Batman tie-ins, you won’t find them. No Gordon. No Alfred. No mention anywhere of Wayne Enterprises. They’ve done a really good job of making it a standalone film. Gotham City could be any metropolis in real life or a comic story. There’s a really good reason it’s hitting in October. This is, pure and simple, a great horror film.
There are going to be problems going forward. If they plan to use the character in future films with Batman, how are they going to do it without softening that hard R? If they do that, I think they built up too much expectation for that to work. It’s the problem Disney has with Deadpool. Those films are out there and a lot of fun, but will they ever be able to put Deadpool in a mainstream Marvel film? I’m not sure that they can, and it’s going to be a problem for DC here. But that’s a worry for another year and another film. Right now director Mike Flanagan has a really nice film going here that likely will get some cult attraction in the years to come. “Now you have to learn to control it.”
