DCs gory and grotesque body horror movie would…
movie review
CLAYFACE
Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (strong bloody violence, gore, language and some nudity). In theaters.
Things have been tough for DC Studios these days.
“Supergirl” tanked a few months in the past. Last 12 months’s “Superman” was a modest hit, albeit an pleasing one, but it didn’t entice the sky-high curiosity that a tentpole ought to. I suspect a lot of people still don’t know who David Corenswet is.
So it’s no marvel with its enjoyable new “Clayface” that the now-Skydance-owned division is spiritually wanting back to its last movie to gross more than $1 billion — “Joker.”
The acclaimed 2019 Joaquin Phoenix movie selected “Taxi Driver” as its inspiration instead of rigidly sticking to drained comic-book mythology. The movie didn’t join to any complicated “universe.” And its style was psychological thriller instead of motion.
“Clayface” received’t be taking in $1 billion or getting a Best Picture nod. The Joker is one of the best foes of all time; Clayface was ranked No. 73 on IGN’s checklist of comedian e-book villains. I believed he was a skincare masks.
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But this delightfully disgusting flick also walks its own sick path. It’s assuredly horror — the style audiences crave the most proper now. Specifically this is body horror, comparable to “The Substance” with Demi Moore or an organs-galore David Cronenberg movie. It’s gross. In a enjoyable approach!
That means we witness, in gnarly closeups, Matt Hagen’s fairly face gruesomely sliced open, some uncovered bone right here and there, long needles inserted close to the attention sockets, buckets of blood and a lot of other stomach-churning sights. Don’t carry the children, unless your child is the sort you wouldn’t trust around a chipmunk.
Tom Rhys Harries performs Matt Hagen, a okay a Clayface, in DC’s latest movie. Warner Bros. Pictures via AP
Director James Watkins’ swift and grotesque movie combines a few Clayface origin tales, but it hews closest to that of Basil Karlo, an envious B-list actor who goes on a murderous rampage.
The filmmakers pair that glam Hollywood commerce with the less-cheesy title of another variation, Matt Hagen, and lean into showbiz’s unquenchable thirst for youth and magnificence. “Clay Becomes Him.”
Raised in the skids of Gotham, Matt (Tom Rhys Harries) is an actor who’s new on the scene and has just obtained his first Oscar nomination. The same day the egomaniac hears his title called out, the overconfident and reckless star hops into mattress with the girlfriend of a highly effective mobster.
“I know you — you’re famous,” she says at the membership.
Matt flirts back: “I just have one of those faces.”
Not for long!
He wakes up after his one-night stand to her boyfriend’s thugs carving him up like a pumpkin.
Matt is horrifically disfigured after being attacked by the mob. Warner Bros. Pictures via AP
Horrifically disfigured, Matt will get fired from a major movie and dropped by his agent. A #MeToo-style smear marketing campaign is waged against him and he loses his court case because the mafia controls the Gotham PD.
Hiding out in a dingy house — the viewers shrieked when a cockroach crawled across his head — he spots an interview with Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) about an experimental nanotechnology that can restore broken tissue. It’s meant for degenerative ailments, but he’s an actor — aka a flagrant narcissist who couldn’t care less about other people’s wants.
Ackie, who performed Whitney Houston in that terrible biopic, is intriguing and real as the difficult doc. Drained of enthusiasm and wanting like she just stepped off a crimson eye, Caitlyn insists it would be ethically incorrect to carry out trials on Matt. The tech isn’t FDA accredited. But, far from excellent, she needs to flip the chook at the cosmetics company that stole her research.
Before he was brutalized, Matt was driving high in Hollywood. Warner Bros. Pictures via AP
And so the doc injects the actor with pink goo — always a good start — and he’s soon back to being shiny and good-looking on the crimson carpet. That is, until his face begins to droop like stretched pizza dough.
While that feels like any quantity of comic-book set-ups, say “Spider-Man” or “Deadpool,” the temper and motive listed here are vastly different. Matt is a determined and attention-starved man. Ravenous, he wants fame and its addictive trappings back pronto. And, once the doc treats him and discovers he can shape-shift into other people, Matt doesn’t use his powers to save any puppies or Girl Scouts. It’s killin’ time.
He goes after his enemies one by one like Arya Stark.
And he retains altering his look like, um, Arya Stark.
Yet no visage is creepier than Matt’s.
A doctor (Naomi Ackie) develops an experimental technology that can help Matt. Warner Bros. Pictures via AP
That’s where Welsh actor Harries’ abnormality comes in. I hope he received’t thoughts me saying that he visually walks a effective line between a GQ model and a serial killer. On the big screen, he’s a new face, pardon the expression, so you are feeling uneasy and finally queasy watching him. He’s A+ casting.
He makes use of that mighty mug in an electric climactic massacre, when Matt goes to a nightclub to off those who wronged him while morphing into numerous partiers to lead the mob off the scent. Every so often he’ll flip back into himself in the center of the crowded dance flooring to shake all people up like a sport of “Where’s Freak-o?”.
When Clayface utterly takes over Matt then, Harries smiles a menacing and psychotic grin — a lot like our outdated good friend the Joker.
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