Clayface (2026) * * *

 

Directed by:  James Watkins

Starring:  Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, Eddie Marsan, David Dencik, Joshua James, Joana Ribiero

I never heard of Clayface, but I read up a little on it and it has been published with DC Comics starting in 1940.  He's a hero who becomes an anti-hero and then a villain, mostly because the untested, but revolutionary cell repair serum our hero Matt Hagen (Harries) is administered delivers escalating and dangerous results.  

As Clayface opens, Matt is a rising superstar actor who learns he is nominated for an Academy Award while on the set of his next film.  He and his lifelong friend Corey (James) go out on the town in Gotham and Matt sleeps with a mobster's girlfriend.  The mobster, Markos Szabo (Dencik) doesn't take kindly to this development and cuts Matt's face to ribbons.  With his looks gone, Matt's stardom dries up.  His manager (Marsan) dumps him and then embezzles all of Matt's earnings, and Matt is unable to sue successfully or pursue criminal charges because Markos has the police and courts in his back pocket.

Following multiple, fruitless surgeries which leave him still deformed and scarred, Matt discovers an experimental serum invented by Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Ackie) which is still untested on humans.  Matt desperately decides to become the human guinea pig.  For a short time, the experiment works, until Matt's face one night contorts into odd shapes.  Further treatments yield results such as the skin's ability to repair itself immediately and then, if under the proper amount of stress, Matt's face can transform into someone else's.  Once this discovery is made, Matt uses this advantage to seek vengeance against Markos and his cronies.  

It is here where Clayface reminds me of Darkman (1990), the Sam Raimi thriller in which a scientist manufactures masks which allows him to assume anyone's identity for 100 minutes, which is when the mask begins to melt.  Clayface disposes of the middle man and allows Matt to simply allow himself to assume someone else's face.  Clayface is noir in every fiber of its being, and it is also involving as not just a revenge thriller, but a meditation on the fleeting nature of fame.  Matt is a sympathetic hero, but only so much as you'll see as the movie progresses.  After all, Clayface's atmosphere doesn't allow for it to have a happy ending.  You'd be surprised how well it works.