Clayface Is Finally Here, and DC Went Full Horror With It

I honestly did not expect DC to be the studio that gave us a proper horror movie this Halloween, but here we are. Clayface landed in theatres on Friday and I have been thinking about it since the first trailer dropped. This is not a cape movie. There is no Justice League cameo, no post-credit tease that I have heard of. It is a sad, ugly, grimy story about a man who loses his face, and that is exactly why I am excited about it.

Quick recap for anyone who missed the build-up. Matt Hagen is a stage actor in Gotham whose star is on the rise, until he crosses the wrong gangster and ends up disfigured. He goes looking for a miracle cure, finds one that works a little too well, and the rest of the film is him slowly losing his mind while his body stops behaving like a body. If you grew up on The Fly or that creepy Batman: The Animated Series two-parter about Clayface, you already know this is a tragedy dressed up as a monster movie.

Tom Rhys Harries plays Hagen, which is a bold call. He is not a household name, and I think that works in the film's favour because you are not watching a star, you are watching a guy fall apart. Naomi Ackie plays the doctor who gets pulled into his mess, and the supporting cast has some solid British character actors like Eddie Marsan and David Dencik who always make a Gotham feel lived in.

The names behind the camera are what sold me. James Watkins directed, and if you saw his Speak No Evil remake you know he is comfortable making an audience squirm. The script started with Mike Flanagan, who I would trust with just about any horror idea, and Hossein Amini came in later. Matt Reeves is producing alongside James Gunn and Peter Safran, so this sits somewhere between the grounded Batman world and the new DC Universe. It is rated R and runs under two hours, which these days feels like a gift.

Money wise, the Thursday previews pulled in around 3.5 million dollars according to the trade papers, and the film is playing on more than 3,400 screens. That is not Spider-Man numbers, obviously, but it was never meant to be. The real test is whether it holds next weekend, which happens to be Halloween. If word of mouth is good, this could quietly become one of the better performers of the autumn.

One thing worth mentioning: DC originally had this pencilled in for September and then pushed it to late October. People read a lot into date shifts, but in this case a horror film opening the week before Halloween is just common sense.

I am planning to catch it this weekend and will come back with a proper review. If you have already seen it, tell me in the comments whether the practical effects live up to the hype, because that is the part I care about most.