Oh, I’m on a hot streak right now with these film reviews. On top of that, I’ve been watching a lot of the DC stuff, and I’m up to date with most of it. Certain projects, I’m happy to wait a little bit for *cough* Peacemaker *cough*. But look, the DCU has had a solid start, and when they announced this film, I was interested to see if they could pull it off!
‘Clayface’ tells the story of up-and-coming actor Matt Hagen, who is doing wonders in the acting world. He’s just been announced as a nominee for Best Actor at the Oscars, and it looks like the young man from Gotham is achieving his childhood dream. To celebrate, he and his best friend, Corey, go to a party, where Matt is approached by budding actress Mia Torrez. Despite being warned by Corey that Mia is the girlfriend of a local infamous gangster, Markos Szabo, Matt parties the night away with her and ends up taking her home. Naturally, a crime boss isn’t going to let that pass, and the next morning, Szabo and his goons, who have broken into Matt’s flat, cut up his face. Despite going to the police, it appears that Szabo has rigged things in his favour, and Matt’s career is finished, especially given that all the surgeries he needs have ruined his face. One day, he sees an interview with Dr Caitlyn Corr, who claims to have come up with a nanotechnology programme that can heal damaged body parts, but who has lost funding. Matt approaches Caitlyn, coming up with a plan whereby she carries out the human testing on him, and the publicity will mean she gets more funding. Will Caitlyn’s nanites be able to restore Matt’s face to what it was? And can Matt Hagen restore his reputation and reach the heights he had before?
So this film was clearly very character-focused, and so there really isn’t that much of a cast. I’ll very quickly mention some of the supporting characters. David Dencik plays Markos Szabo, and as far as Gotham crime bosses go, he’s okay. Eddie Marsan is Frank Fitzpatrick, who is Matt’s manager, and again, it’s a minor role. Playing John Borrelli, the fiancé of Caitlyn, is Max Minghella. I’ve seen him in one or two other things, and he plays an inquisitive cop well. And thus you see that the focus is purely on our two leads. Let’s speak about Dr Caitlyn Corr, who is played by Naomi Ackie. Caitlyn starts as this very confident and knowledgeable scientist, and as the film goes on, you see a vulnerability in her, as she clearly does care about her work, but also about Matt. Ackie does really well to bring those layers to the film, and in a movie where Caitlyn is clearly the secondary protagonist, she makes sure that the character shines just as much. The standout performance, however, unsurprisingly goes to Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, aka Clayface. I’d not seen Harries in anything before, and when he was cast, I thought, well, this is probably the biggest role he has; he’s got a relatively blank slate to make it his own. And he really does. Matt is such a complicated character, and through the film, the viewer’s opinion of him changes dynamically, sort of like clay, aha! Harries is so effortlessly charismatic and haunted that there are genuinely parts of the film where you forget that he’s an actor playing a role. It’s almost as if he were Matt Hagen all along. Maybe he is!?
I have to admit, I was surprised at the speed at which this film was announced, produced and released. Like, the DCU is a new cinematic universe, and its third film is about a Batman villain who probably doesn’t even make the top 10 most popular Batman villains. Very interesting choice. Then again, one of the things that the Co-CEOs of DC Studios have said is that if they feel that there is a good script and great story to tell, it doesn’t matter what it is, they’ll go for it. And ‘Clayface’ is a perfect example of when that goes right. From the very first minute, it hooks you with a good storyline and a decent script. There’s no general buildup as a lot of horror films have, we’re into the action and the gore quickly. I’ve not been a fan of horror films for a long time, but I have to say that this was not only very watchable, but the scary aspects of the film felt more unnerving than unnatural. The one thing that I think makes ‘Clayface’ really stand out is that they’ve not attempted in any way to make this character less of a villain than he is. We’ve had a trend recently with films like ‘Joker’ and ‘Venom’, where traditional villains are given these backstories that make you go, aww, they’re misunderstood. Nope. Matt Hagen is not a good guy, and his transformation into a villain is excellent!
This film had a minuscule budget compared to ‘Superman’ and ‘Supergirl’. That is understandable, of course, but in the few days that it’s been out, the profit it’s made is double the budget put in. Very impressive. What’s more impressive is that it doesn’t look like they skimped out on graphics at all. Fair enough, it’s a more grounded tale, but the effects of Matt’s face changing etc were so so good. On top of that, we got our first look at the DCU Gotham, and it was pretty awesome. I’m excited to see how Matt interacts further with characters in the greater DC Universe. The music was good, and especially in those scenes where the tension was higher, I was certainly more aware of the soundtrack. Overall, this was actually a very good film. Although I was sceptical, I was clearly proven wrong, and the DCU continues its promising run!
Rating:
Story: ★★★★
Acting: ★★★½
Cinematography: ★★★★
Music: ★★★
Enjoyability: ★★★★