Movie Review: Clayface

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B+

An excellent comic book horror movie. 

This film tells the origin story of the Batman villain Clayface. Actor Matt Hagen is massively scarred just when his career is fully taking off. He becomes a test subject for an experimental treatment that will restore his face. However, when the side effects allow him to morph his face into anyone, he uses this for revenge against those that had wronged him.  

What makes this movie work so well is Matt Hagen, himself. This movie does a wonderful job of exploring how this character goes from being a tragic figure to a full-on supervillain. This transition happens gradually but completely believably. As this happens, we go from rooting for him to being terrified of him. Having a character be essentially both our protagonist at times and our villain at others can be a difficult feat to pull off. However, this movie does a great job at this. Much of this is due to Tom Rhys Harries performance as the title character. 

As body horror, this movie does an excellent job as well. There are many moments that will turn your stomach. They are truly grotesque in the best possible way. None of this feels unnecessary though. Each grotesque and gory scene comes out of the story and characters rather than being there simply for shock value. As such there is an emotional and narrative effect to each of these scenes that makes the movie all the more effective and scary. 

If I were to fault this movie, it would be heavily in its first act. The filmmakers seem to be rushing to get to the point where he is scarred and volunteers for the experimental treatment. As such everything before that goes by much too fast. There is a lot of exposition in these early scenes that feels clumsy and forced as if the filmmakers just want to get this information out of the way. 

An R-rated horror movie based off a Batman villain was a risky move but one that certainly paid off.