Clayface Review: A Horrifying, Surprisingly Human Villain Story

I walked into Clayface expecting yet another comic book movie. I walked out in something close to shock and awe. It was incredibly immersive, wildly entertaining, and honestly one of the most enjoyable nights I’ve had at the theater in a long time. For me, it belongs in the conversation with 2019’s Joker as one of the best standalone villain movies we’ve had.

The setup

Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) is a successful actor whose career and reputation depend heavily on his looks and popularity. One terrible decision leaves him disfigured, and the people who once supported him prove just how conditional that support was. Desperate to reclaim his life, he turns to scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), whose experimental treatment offers him another chance. Unfortunately, getting his face back is only the beginning of his problems.

I wasn’t especially interested after seeing the trailers. What changed my mind was hearing how much the filmmakers drew from the original two-part Clayface story in Batman: The Animated Series and from body-horror films such as The Fly. I watched those animated episodes the night before my screening, and I’m glad I did. The movie understands what makes this character tragic without feeling obligated to retell the cartoon beat for beat.

What works

First, Clayface feels like a movie made by people who genuinely wanted to tell this story, rather than another excuse to set up three more films. It has its own vision of Gotham, too. The city isn’t constantly buried in darkness and grime. There’s enough ordinary life and visual contrast that the horrible things happening to Matt feel more unsettling. And the film never needs Batman to show up and validate its existence.

The biggest success, though, is Matt himself. Joker gave us a lonely, sensitive outsider who finally snapped under the cruelty of the world. Matt is almost the opposite. He knew how to play the game, was already enjoying success, and then discovered how quickly people can discard you when you’re no longer useful or perfect. I could sympathize with that without excusing what he eventually does. Some of the people he goes after are genuinely awful, and part of you understands his anger. But understanding someone’s desire for revenge is very different from defending murder.

That distinction becomes even more interesting because his powers react to his emotions. His anger and feelings of betrayal can turn into violence before he has fully chosen to act. In that sense there’s a little of Venom here, except the destructive force is tied to Matt’s own state of mind. Once he understands what his body can do, he’s still responsible for what happens next. He has opportunities to pull away, heal, and rebuild his life, but he keeps returning to the very feelings that are destroying it. Even his unreturned love for Caitlyn becomes another source of darkness.

I appreciate that the movie doesn’t bend over backward to make him a helpless victim. The tragedy is that Matt has been wronged, but also makes terrible, impulsive decisions of his own. His transformation gradually becomes about more than what he looks like. He starts losing his sense of who Matt Hagen even is.

The body horror is excellent. The transformations are imaginative and grotesque, but I never felt the filmmakers were trying to make me squirm just for the sake of it. The practical-looking work and CGI blend beautifully, and the film knows when to hold back and when to let loose. The performances are strong throughout, particularly Harries at the center of it all. Volker Bertelmann’s soundtrack deserves credit as well; it captures both the fear and the sadness of the story so naturally that I’ve kept listening to it since seeing the film.

What doesn’t

This is the section I struggled with, because I genuinely don’t have a substantial complaint. It’s a fairly straightforward revenge story at its core, and I can imagine someone with different expectations wanting something else from it. But I don’t think a film needs to reinvent cinema to earn a perfect score. It needs to know what it’s trying to do and do it exceptionally well. For me, Clayface did exactly that.

Should you see it in a theater?

Absolutely. I went in with low expectations and spent the entire movie glued to the screen with a smile on my face. Days later, I was still thinking about it and listening to the music. That’s worth more to me than an arbitrary rule that a first review shouldn’t get a 10, or that only some supposedly higher form of art deserves one.

Underneath the spectacle is something that stuck with me: rage can feel satisfying in the moment, especially when you’ve been betrayed, but revenge doesn’t heal the original wound. Sometimes all it does is leave you standing in the wreckage of what you could have saved.

10/10. One of my favorite moviegoing experiences in a long time.

Spoilers: the final act and Matt's transformation

What impressed me most about the ending was what the film didn’t do. I was expecting the usual giant-monster third act, with Clayface smashing his way through Gotham. Instead, we get an intimate, vicious revenge sequence in the nightclub. By then Matt has learned to use his powers, and there’s a moment when you realize just how unstoppable he’s become.

The kills are inventive because they grow naturally out of what his body can do. He can engulf someone and suffocate them inside himself, seal a person’s mouth and nose with clay, or use his own blood and the returning nanobots as a horrifying weapon. There are nods to the more recognizable Clayface imagery, including an arm becoming an enormous hammer, without turning the entire finale into a parade of familiar comic-book poses.

The apparent electrocution death is another satisfying callback to the animated series, and I loved that the movie built toward his monstrous final form rather than spending the whole runtime showing it off. The most unsettling part isn’t how powerful he becomes, though. It’s how little of Matt seems to remain. He gains control over his physical form while losing control over himself. All the revenge in the world can’t give him back the person he was.