Clayface review – flesh-stretching DC body horror is very gory but not very good

A sense of desperation is understandably in the air over at DC, the company, like Marvel, slowly realising that the mass superhero fever has finally broken. There’s still interest there, of course (this summer’s Spider-Man is now the biggest film of all time in the US after all), but it’s no longer good enough to leave a high-speed conveyor belt unmanned, purpose and quality control be damned. 2019 saw a staggering 10 superhero films released in cinemas, and the inevitable exhaustion that followed, also fueled by Covid, led to a gradual winding down, monster hits turning into minor ones and sure bets often becoming expensive flops.

As Peter Parker winged his way to box office records this summer, DC’s Supergirl bombed so hard that experts believe it might have cost Warners upwards of $200m in losses. It was just the latest disappointment for the brand after Black Adam, Joker: Folie à Deux, Blue Beetle and The Flash all underperformed while even last year’s much-heralded Superman reboot only grossed a solid $618m, a far cry from the $1bn heyday of the genre (things got so bad that even a fully filmed Batgirl adventure was deleted for the tax break). Notably, the last DC film to swoop past that magic figure was Joker in 2019, a darker, lower-budget attempt to spotlight a villain rather than a hero, a big swing with relatively low stakes. Todd Phillips’s film might be best known by some for being brave enough to ask the question, “What if Taxi Driver sucked?” but for all of its many issues, it brought buzz and prestige and, shockingly, Oscars, to an easily ridiculed universe. It was also, crucially, something rare in that world: a close-to-good idea.

The evolution of Clayface, another R-rated villain origin story with a markedly lower budget than the DC norm, was not in direct response to Joker (it is allegedly the first in a new “Gods and Monsters” strand) but its path is one that head James Gunn would clearly like to emulate, albeit financially rather than awards-wise. One of many thoughts I had during Clayface, other than what I should have for dinner and how long I might be able to make a small popcorn last, was just how striking Phillips’s film stands in comparison. It remains shallow and smug and cursed with a grating lead performance, but it was visually punchy and, like the very best comic book adaptations, genuinely transporting, rich on dank atmosphere and thoughtfully curated production design. It was an undeniable moment.

Clayface is overwhelmingly not a moment. Admittedly its targets are way lower (Mike Flanagan’s original script, allegedly more texturally complex, was entirely rewritten) but even as a similarly new way in, as a relatively standalone horror movie for those who wouldn’t now rush toward a superhero caper, it’s a clumsily missed opportunity and another reminder that those at DC don’t seem to know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.

Rather than feeling like a lower-budget DC movie (it was made for around $40m), it looks closer to a network TV series, more Fox than HBO Max, more Gotham than Lanterns. With the standard there now so high (The Penguin looked every bit a blockbuster movie), the distractingly tinny aesthetic and lack of confident directorial style is disappointing both as a horror (especially at a time of micro-budgeted films such as Obsession and Backrooms looking so very distinctive) and as a tale that takes place in the DC universe. Liverpool was used as a stand-in here and if, like me, you found Manchester to be an unconvincing New York in Brand New Day, you won’t realise how good we had it …

Gotham is where working-class boy done good Matt (Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries, fine enough) is from and a place that he was desperate to leave. He’s a rising movie star, riding high after his first Oscar nomination (“Nominees don’t wait in line!”) and on a trip back to his home town, he makes the mistake of sleeping with the girlfriend of a violent gangster, introduced by Goldfrapp’s Ooh La La, one of the film’s many dated attempts at cool. As a result, he has his money-making face sliced up by goons and his career soon crumbles, back to a bedsit with all his money wasted on useless surgeries orchestrated by his viperous lawyer.

Matt is desperate for revenge and resurrection, and after stumbling upon a doctor working on experimental skin surgery (Naomi Ackie, trying her hardest), he thinks he’s found his chance. But before you can say Substance (the elixir is at least red here over Brat green), things go horribly wrong …

Harries as Matt, who is seeking revenge and resurrection. Photograph: Warner Bros

What the film does do is successfully gross us out, as Matt’s skin starts to morph in tune with his emotional state, which might be enough for some, and in the screening I attended, mostly filled with rowdy non-journalists, there was a vocal response to the goriest and gloopiest moments. The trailer scene, of Matt trying to cut through flesh growing over his eyes while on a bumpy flight, is brilliantly awful to watch, and it’s in these more intimate, uneasy moments where director James Watkins shows off his dusty genre mettle. His best films have been his earlier, smaller attempts – 2002’s genuinely creepy and forward-thinking reality TV horror My Little Eye and 2008’s brutal hoodie thriller Eden Lake – but he’s less assured when the canvas is expanded.

Clayface is as poorly lit and junkily made as the very blandest of streaming movies and never once do we feel transported to Gotham with a cast of exclusively non-American actors trying to out-accent each other (Eddie Marsan, as ever, loses that game). It doesn’t help that what could have been interesting at one point (perhaps when Flanagan was the sole author) with briefly pointed at issues of AI, unreality and method acting, has been sanded down to a kill-by-numbers revenge thriller led by a character who feels like an off-brand swirl of Venom, Hulk, Joker and Mystique. His abilities, and the rules of how they work, are so poorly defined, that he just becomes a screenwriting device, able to do whatever is needed in the moment.

Any tragedy that could and should have come from the character and his journey – boy from the wrong side of the tracks to privileged Oscar nominee to flesh-stretching, face-changing supervillain (!) – is excised for an easier video game trajectory, from one familiar level to the next (despite those involved comparing this to The Fly, this is very much not that). Clayface might be the start of a “bold” new era for DC’s superhero output but for anyone outside of a boardroom, it’s a face we have seen many times before.

• Clayface is out in Australian cinemas on 22 October and in US and UK cinemas on 23 October