Clayface - Movie Review

Review

Jeremy Jahns reviews Clayface, a standalone origin story about the Batman villain that leaves Batman offscreen—even though, as Jahns jokes, Batman is supposedly somewhere in the city “taking the day off.”

Story and Performance

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a rising actor whose promising life is shattered when a mobster mutilates his face. An experimental nanobot treatment restores his appearance, but glitches leave him grotesquely changing and set him on a path of revenge.

Jahns praises Harries for keeping Matt engaging as he loses himself physically and morally. The film largely avoids portraying Matt as a misunderstood hero; if Batman ever confronts him, Jahns says, Batman would be justified.

Highlights and Criticisms

Jahns enjoys the film’s gothic body-horror atmosphere and restrained, sometimes shadowy transformations, which he thinks suit its low-budget horror style better than flashy effects would. He also laughs at some of the film’s dramatic dialogue, interpreting Matt’s line “I’m coming for them and hell is coming with me” as a movie buff quoting Tombstone.

Other tangents include a mock explanation of how to spot a two-way mirror, followed by a joke about airplane bathrooms, and the absurdity of Batman ignoring a crime wave in Gotham.

Jahns is less convinced by the romance subplot involving the doctor who treats Matt, played by Naomi Ackie, and wishes the revenge story had a stronger payoff. He finds the film a little slow and thinks it could lose 15–20 minutes, but overall he enjoyed it. He compares it to The Fly crossed with Hollow Man, with a touch of The Outer Limits, and jokes that its body-transformation premise makes for a surprisingly apt Ozempic allegory.

People Mentioned

• Jeremy Jahns — Reviewer
• Tom Rhys Harries — Matt Hagen
• Naomi Ackie — The doctor who treats Matt