Clayface review: DC's body-horror detour is gooey, well-cast fun with nothing much inside

Clayface is the DC movie for people who wished The Fly had a talk-show circuit. James Watkins' R-rated origin story is gross, quick and better made than it needs to be. It is also, by the end, a revenge thriller with a melting face where its ideas should be. Come for the makeup effects. Do not stay for the meaning, because the film never decides what that is.

A star loses his face, and his career goes with it#

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor on the edge of fame. He has just landed his first Oscar nomination. He then spends a night with the girlfriend of a local crime boss, Szabo (David Dencik), and the next morning Szabo takes a switchblade to Matt's face. The career ends fast. His agent drops him and, per RogerEbert.com, his manager (Eddie Marsan) embezzles from him.

Desperate, Matt finds Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a scientist with an untested cell treatment. He volunteers. It works, at first. Then his body stops taking orders. The official synopsis says the treatment "unexpectedly affects his grip on reality," which is a polite way to describe a man whose face now goes wherever it likes.

That is the set-up, and it is a good one. Hollywood takes its stars at face value. This film takes that literally.

The goo is first-rate#

The best reason to see Clayface is the practical effects work. Variety's Guy Lodge praises its grisly practical makeup and calls the film "a pleasing throwback" to '90s horror like Darkman and Thinner. He flags one set piece involving fused eyelids, nail scissors and plane turbulence as the kind that will fuel nightmares "well into the coming months." We will take his word on the timeline.

Watkins, who made Eden Lake and the American Speak No Evil, clearly enjoys the R rating. The film is rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, language, brief drug use and some nudity. It earns each item on that list with care.

The script cannot pick a theme#

Here is the problem. Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com lists the films Clayface could be: an Icarus tale, a play-God story, a jab at celebrity vanity like The Substance, maybe even a warning about A.I. His verdict is that it is "a bit of all of these things, but also none of them."

That is the right diagnosis. The screenplay is by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, two writers with real chops. Amini wrote Drive. Flanagan has made a career of grief dressed as horror. Yet the film keeps raising an idea and dropping it. When Matt returns to the red carpet with his old face, it should mean something about fame. Tallerico notes the film refuses to sink its teeth into it. It just moves on to the next kill.

The film also cannot decide how we should feel about Matt. Is he a victim of a system that chews up rising stars? Is he a monster now? Tallerico says even Watkins and Harries seem unsure how to frame him. An audience can live with a messy hero. It is harder to live with a messy point of view.

Lodge, the film's biggest fan among the major critics, admits it is "all piping-hot nonsense." He simply enjoys the nonsense more than Tallerico does.

The cast does more than the script asks#

Harries, a Welsh actor best known for smaller British films, is a good choice. He is new enough that the audience has no baggage about his face. Lodge says he brings an anguished hunger to the role.

Naomi Ackie gives Dr. Corr more curiosity and conscience than the "sexy scientist" type usually gets, per Lodge. Max Minghella plays a suspicious cop who happens to be engaged to her, and Tallerico calls him effective. Dencik plays the crime boss with what Lodge calls "genuinely unnerving levels of sleaze." Eddie Marsan is, as ever, Eddie Marsan, which is a compliment.

Gotham looks like a backlot#

One more complaint. The DC films that stuck, like The Batman and Joker, feel like real, dirty places. Tallerico says Clayface never looks like it takes place anywhere but on a backlot and calls it "the dullest vision of Gotham yet put on film." For a movie about surfaces, that is an odd surface to skimp on.

The good news is that you do not need to know anything about the wider DC universe. Variety's headline promises no franchise homework required, and that is true. It plays as a one-off.

What critics and audiences say#

Critics lean positive. Clayface holds 78 percent from 227 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 94 percent audience score. It opened at No. 1 with about $24 million over October 23 to 25 and had reached about $56.7 million in the U.S. and Canada by November 8, per Box Office Mojo.

Basics are from Variety and Warner Bros.

The verdict#

Clayface is a well-cast, well-made, properly disgusting B-movie that keeps hinting it has something to say about fame. It never says it. If you want a Halloween-season gross-out with good actors, it delivers. If you want The Fly, rent The Fly.

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