In the first season of 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series, there is an early two-part episode arc that introduced young audiences to the prismatic horrors of one of the Caped Crusader’s lesser known rogues: Clayface. With their distinct personalization that made even the most minor characters emotionally profound, thrilling action, and precise worldbuilding, these episodes encapsulate why Batman: The Animated Serieshas become a gold standard for how to imagine Clayface. It’s understandable then why writer Mike Flanagan, who shares a writing credit on the new Clayface film out today, namechecked the animated series’s rendition of the character as a source of inspiration. Directed by James Watkins and co-written by Hossein Amini, this new Clayfacefilm, the third from co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran’s revamped DC Studios, is entertaining. The set pieces lean into the gore inherent to the premise with aplomb. It moves at a briskly engaging pace. The story plays with the slipperiness of identity and desire in a way that bolsters the horror of its lead character’s arc. But unfortunately, all these pleasures prove to be fleeting in the face of the film’s problems. The characters are notably flat. They feel like the beginning of an idea, not its full culmination. And the city of Gotham does not feel unique enough among the increasingly vague settings that plague superhero epics.
Clayfacefollows actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) at the cusp of great fame and power in his career. He’s just been nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award. The world is clamoring for his chiseled jawline and wry grin. He’s eons away from the life he used to live in the rough-hewn neighborhood of the Narrows in Gotham City. But when he decides to sleep with Mia Torrez (Joana Ribeiro), the lover of violent mobster Markos Szabo (David Dencik), even after his childhood friend and fellow actor, Cory (Joshua James), warns him of who she’s entangled with, his carefully curated life is destroyed. Szabo doesn’t take kindly to Matt’s indiscretion and brutally carves up his face. The filmmakers delight in showing the gruesomeness of Matt’s nearly unrecognizable face as it’s being operated upon by ultimately unsuccessful cosmetic surgeons. Matt mounts a vaguely defined court case against Szabo to prove that Szabo was responsible for his gruesome appearance. He loses. Szabo proves too powerfully connected. Worse yet, the case brings scrutiny to Matt’s past in which people from his old neighborhood gleefully discuss his purported wrongdoings. Matt gets publicly “cancelled” for his treatment of women. But it’s not entirely clear if these stories are true or blown out of proportion.
Matt turns to Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a scientist working on an experimental treatment motivated by her brother’s struggle with Huntington’s disease. The treatment, a kind of nano-therapy, returns Matt to his original appearance but whenever emotions rise he loses his hold on his physical form, causing his face to look as though it’s melting. Caitlyn proves to be a stabilizing force for Matt. When his new shapeshifting abilities — which allow him to transform into other people and objects as well as heal at a remarkable rate — go haywire, it’s her touch and voice that ground him. But this nascent love story lacks the gravitas of the subtextually queer story in Batman: The Animated Series.Despite Ackie’s efforts, her character is ill-defined. All we learn about her is that she’s dedicated to her work, her brother had Huntington’s, and she’s engaged to a cop (Max Minghella) who becomes suspicious of Matt when murders start to occur. Performance wise, Harries fares better because he’s given more complexity as he moves from fear to something much darker as he realizes the full extent of his new powers. Matt is no longer interested in merely regaining the reputation, career, and money that was taken from him in the wake of Szabo’s attack. He wants revenge.
Watching Matt slip into the forms of other
Watching Matt slip into the forms of other people, especially the goons Szabo surrounds himself with, lends Clayfaceits thrills. There’s a particularly great sequence at Szabo’s club in Gotham as Matt flutters between forms and weaponizes everything from his nano-dominated blood to elastic flesh to kill the gangsters in question. The film even toys with gender slipperiness during a crucial early scene in which Caitlyn monitors Matt’s vitals as he sleeps to make sure he’s okay and while he’s dreaming, he transforms into her. The horror and tension in the film’s set pieces are genuinely effective. But the impact of these scenes is undercut by the fact that if Matt is a two-dimensional character, at best, everyone around him is one-dimensional and rudimentary. Szabo is a bland, unremarkable antagonist and it’s hard to buy Clayface’s love for Caitlyn when we don’t quite know her desires beyond what is absolutely necessary for the plot to keep moving. Whenever Matt would talk about losing himself in these transformations, I had to wonder, how are we supposed to mourn who Matt once was when we have little idea of who he once was?
In the Batman: The Animated Seriestwo-parter, “Feat of Clay”, Clayface breaks down in a crucial scene, exclaiming, “I’m not an actor anymore. I’m not even a man!” This moment demonstrates the fear, longing, rage, and confusion tangled within Matt as he devolves further into monstrosity. Meanwhile, Clayfacemay have some intriguing ideas about Matt’s lack of self-knowledge and sense of being lost. But these qualities, while voiced in dialogue by Matt, don’t have a compelling narrative engine or emotional center. Just because his inability to understand himself and his confusion over his transformation is spoken about in dialogue doesn’t mean they resonate emotionally.
The question looming over Clayfacehas been, what is a movie about a lesser-known Batman villain without Batman himself? But it’s the film’s anemic worldbuilding that’s the bigger problem. Yes, the city has its factions and class divisions. Yes, it is dark-hearted and unforgiving. But it also looks like it could be almost anywhere. It is as if Gunn and Safran had to keep Gotham vague enough that any version of Batman could be slotted into such a world when the time arises. I had a fun time watching Clayface,but it doesn’t offer up any lasting cinematic pleasures.
