The ancient Greeks used terra-cotta masks to express the extremes of emotion during their theater performances. The new film Clayface hopes to function in a similar way. Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, an actor whose blockbuster earnings and award-season accolades have propelled him to stardom.
It all falls apart when his face is horribly mangled and he undergoes an experimental medical procedure to repair the damage. This also grants him the unexpected ability to shape-shift his appearance at will. As fans of Batman comic books and cartoons already know, this goes pretty wrong too, resulting in one of the most gruesome villains of the DC universe.
The new film, out Friday, is a cautionary tale wrapped up in body horror, arriving just in time for Halloween. It is also an experiment of sorts for DC Studios chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran, who have taken Batman out of the equation and presented fans with the monster as the main character. Rhys Harries hopes it will play as a tragedy, along the lines of those ancient actors and their twisted masks.
He’s just clutching, trying to find some solid ground to retain a life that he’s worked really hard to build,” says Rhys Harries, best known for the TV thrillers Suspicion and White Lines. She turned to me at one point and was like, ‘It’s like Oedipus Rex.’ ” He quickly clarifies that he’s talking thematically, not that the movie mirrors the Sophocles play. (Clayface makes some horrific choices but does not kill his father and inadvertently seduce his mother.) Like that tragic, self-destructive Oedipus from antiquity, Matt Hagen is arrogant and deluded, and he doesn’t realize he’s the bad guy until it’s far too late. Otherwise it just becomes a pretty spectacle with no roots.” That sets a high standard for a film that wears its B-movie bona fides just as proudly.
As Matt’s chiseled features begin to dissolve and fuse together, director James Watkins, whose credits include 2012’s The Woman in Black and 2024’s Speak No Evil, occasionally puts aside the high-minded tragedy for gross-out shocks. In one especially skin-crawling sequence, he uses cuticle scissors to reopen his fused eyelids in an airplane bathroom while turbulence tosses him back and forth. Still, the script explores plenty of interior, emotional terror.
It was written by Carrie and The Haunting of Hill House showrunner Mike Flanagan and Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini. He might find a lot in common with Dr. Hyde, or The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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