Clayface Review

“You feel that throbbing pain behind your eyeballs? That's my blood cells trying to get out, making their way back to me. Soon, you'll be haemorrhaging, and you'll spill your guts out of every pore. That's my revenge inside of you.” – Matt Hagen (Clayface)

If I need tell you that I’m an obsessive Batman fan, you’re either new around here or, clearly, you haven’t been paying attention. So, it was with a little bit of trepidation that I went to see DC’s latest comic book based offering, Clayface. Clayface is from Batman’s gallery of rogues. But Batman isn’t in this film. See where I’m heading here? I’ve been badly bitten by solo films featuring Batman’s villains before. Check out Catwoman (2004) with Halle Berry, or Joker: Foilie a Deux (2024) – a film so bad, I felt the need for a bath afterward.

Clayface though has an advantage – he’s not actually a mainstream villain, and he has always been one of the characters who lends himself more to a horror movie were he to appear in a solo film – and that’s exactly the case here, and just in time for Halloween too. To explain a bit of the background of this character, let’s take a brief look back for some context.

Clayface was introduced in 1940 in Detective Comics #40. There, he was jealous, ageing horror movie star Basil Karlo, sabotaging the remake of one of his classic movies, under a heavy disguise. (Click here to hear all about it on our latest episode of Comic Panel Universe.) During the Silver Age in 1961, Clayface had a second incarnation, this time as actor Matt Hagen, who could mould his body to imitate anybody. I have never read that story, unfortunately. My main exposure to the Matt Hagen version was the two part Batman: The Animated Series story, Feat of Clay back in 1992 which showed his tragic origin – and that was an effective animated body horror story which I recommend watching.

Like the best horror protagonists and the best villains, be they comic book or otherwise, they start out innocently enough, but life leads them a lousy hand of no-win events, which alter their lives forever. Or, as the Joker says; “one bad day”. They become victims of their circumstances in other words. And look back through the classic horror films, you’ll see it’s true.

So, we have Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) a popular film star, on the cusp of superstardom. He has the looks. He’s going to have it all, the world at his feet and unlimited riches. Until the fateful night he encounters Mia (Joana Ribeiro) at a nightclub, and despite the pleading of his friend, he takes her to his home to spend the rest of the night. Why was his friend pleading? Well, he knew Mia is the girlfriend of ruthless gangster boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik) – a psychopathically jealous man who has Hagen’s face sliced several times with a razor in revenge, scarring and disfiguring him, ruining his career.

Hagen runs out of money when conventional cosmetic surgical procedures fail, but now broke – he seeks out untested unconventional means in the form of highly experimental nano-tech from Dr Caitlyn Carr (Naomi Ackie) who helps him rebuild his face, and the rest of his body – from the inside. But it takes concentration, otherwise his face begins to sag and melt – hence the body horror, and eventually takes on the appearance of brown clay.

So, a tragic beginning which literally turns him in to a monster, seeking revenge on the gang who maimed him.

Tom Rhys Harries puts in an exceptional performance as the over confident star who thinks he’s untouchable, to the sad and vulnerable loner who’s desperate for help, to the vengeance driven monster. But as in the case of all the great movie monsters, despite what he’s doing being wrong and unlawful – we understand his motives and end up sympathising with him. It’s a powerful actor who can elicit audience empathy looking as he does in the final scenes (identical to the animated episode I mentioned earlier) and murdering people as he does.

I saw everything I could possibly want to see in this film. I saw the physical and mental degradation of Matt Hagen into Clayface. I saw his final form when he’s not imitation anybody. I saw him lose his identity. Hell, I even saw a spiked claw construct where his hand was. The visual effects are, admittedly, hard to look at in some scenes. Especially when Hagen’s face starts to sag loosely, causing his eyelids at one point to melt together. But that’s why this film gets an 18 certificate. And this is what happens when you take a horrific comic book character and treat the story properly. Two things I’d like to see in the near future – a PROPER canonical Joker movie, true to the established origin from The Killing Joke graphic novel, and let’s get this Batman 2 fiasco out of the way it’s been delayed too long, I want Clayface to have attracted the attention of The Dark Knight – in an 18 cert film.

But for right here, right now…

Rob Rating = 10