When is a gangster movie not a gangster movie? When is a horror movie not a horror movie? When is a deep character exploration not feeling like dealing with its character? The answer to all of those is Clayface, a movie without a real identity much like its main character. Not many comparisons have been made to Todd Philips's Joker (2019) that I have seen, but it's kinda warranted. We have a mentally deranged Batman villain without Batman, suffering from some mental and physical issues, who becomes a supervillain because the plot kinda makes him do it. While Joker pulled from and in some cases directly referenced Martin Scorsese, Clayface dips into the work of David Cronenberg. Both Joker and Clayface ask very surface level dorm room poster level questions of the previous directors rather than trying to do anything interesting. Clayface is about a guy who gets goopy while touching on identity and what actors do for roles, a motivation that's hard to relate to in general. Both also perv on a woman who has tried to be nice to them, and both fail at the basics of human interaction by the end. While the effects are good and the direction had me covering my eyes, the end result is fairly forgettable.
Directed by James Watkins; written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini; starring Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, and Eddie Marsan
Plot Summary
Actor Matt Hagen has it all until he bangs the wrong gangster's girlfriend. With his face cut to shit, his reputation destroyed, and his money gone, Matt decides to get experimental bugs stuck in his face. Then shit gets goopy.
Characters
Matt Hagen (Harries) - Matt's an on top of the world actor until he's not. He flails around a bit until he decides that murder is a pretty good way to solve his problems. Character arched.
Caitlyn (Ackie) - A brilliant scientist trying to get her revolutionary work due, she crashes blindly by helping an insane actor. A good character not given her due.
Frank (Marsan) - A lawyer who turns on Matt and works for the mob. I dunno, there's not many other characters that are interesting and Caitlyn's cop boyfriend barely gets things to do. I like Marsan, so here he is.
Setting
Gotham City
Da Club - There's one night club in all of Gotham City and it's run by the mob. Be careful dancing because a mobster's super sexy girlfriend might give you drugs and try to sleep with you.
Da Laboratory - Because we needed a laboratory that's super scientific but also is in a random warehouse.
Da Apartments - From the shithole Matt finds himself in to the nice place Caitlyn lives, everyone lives somewhere and they are cheap to furnish.
Coast City
Beachland - There's beaches for people to have deep conversations and think while gazing out at the waves.
Not-Hollywoodland - Movie sets and premieres and people being all fancy and making deals.
Thoughts
Hard "R" - The movie does not shy away from being adult at all. Nudity, violence, sex, face slashing with blood, and various medical malpractice. All while not feeling exploitative or over the top. A good amount of adult storytelling for this super-not-super-tale.
Facial Trauma - If you are not into seeing someone else cut up a face or seeing someone cut up their own face, you're gonna wanna skip the hell out of this. The effect is as good as you can get slicing someone's face without it being practical. Plus it has to be clean at times because our man with a clay face can suck the blood back up like a sponge. Gross but it works.
Watch him sleep at home - I know the illegal human experimental procedure is not exactly going by the book, but did she need to follow him home to his little shithole apartment to watch him? They could have done the little sleep study at the lab, right? A weird little bit of plotting that probably had something to do with them growing closer as people, but it does not make much sense unless they were paying a flat rate for the apartment set and wanted to use it as much as possible. Or maybe hourly for the lab…
Mirror Conversations - A real loss for the production. This was a moment of Gollum/Smeagol or Norman/Green Goblin talking to yourself that could have been cool with some interesting face switching. The switching is so fast and off camera, though, that it does not feel like one character being two but two characters just talking. A missed opportunity using two actors rather than one changing into two. The switching problem is persistent however, as Matt can just be anyone rather than the audience allowed to follow his transformations.
"I wonder who the real Matt Hagen is?" - Good arch words placed throughout the production, but I'm not sure it was fulfilled by the narrative. Matt Hagen goes from a clueless actor from a bad background to a murderous psychopath through the machinations of others, but the progression feels dull. If we thought from the beginning that Matt had bad or bad actions for good motives, maybe he screwed over his friend or helped the wrong someone, and we didn't know who he was as a person, it may have felt better watching him fall. I felt I knew who the real Matt was at the beginning and didn't care when he started to kill folks.
Full Clayface - It's an origin story, so I did not feel Surf Dracula would be a thing in this one. The slide of his abilities was pretty good and the reason he turned into a giant hulking mud man worked pretty good, I thought.
Gangsters are very gangster - This should have been set in a more noir era if they were going to have gangsters be this gangster. For a modern time, a tech bro would have been just as reckless and dark and deserving as murder dolls as the old school slimy gangster with the sexy dubious girlfriend and judges in his pockets.
"Hell's coming with me." - I heard this line first from Kurt Russell in Tombstone and that's where the line stays in my heart. Here it felt flat and dull. Not sure what the point of having it here was other than to give me another reason to not like Matt.
Club fight awesome and gnarly - The best scene in the movie and worth the matinee price of admission. Switching would maybe have made it better, but good action and application of effects and some gnarly deaths made it go off pretty well. Had a lot of fun watching this payoff after the long runway the beginning of the film could be.
Discussion Questions
What was the first "R" rated movie you saw? Do you think you were too young to see it? Was it based on a Batman character?
Have you ever cut yourself on the face? Did you walk around all day with little pieces of toilet paper stuck to your cheek?
Do you talk to yourself? What kinds of things do you say? Is it like journaling or masterbating for you?
Matt has a few phrases like "who is the real Matt" and "hell's coming with me." Do you have motivational phrases to get through the day? Did someone else write yours as well?
What's a singular great scene from an okay movie that you have seen? Was it worth watching the whole movie?
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