Clayface Review: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] once it does, Clayface delivers just the sort of nasty but fun body horror I was hoping it would. >> Hi.

[00:20] gritty throwback to not only the hard-boiled revenge thrillers and low-budget horror flicks of the '50s and '60s, but also to the cult classics of the '80s and '90s that paid homage to them.

[00:33] Shades of The Fly, Darkman, and Johnny Handsome, they can all be found in Handsome, they can all be found in Clayface. working from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hussain Amini, Clayface

[00:47] follows rising young movie star Matt Hagen, a Gotham City native whose sketchy hardscrabble background calls to mind that of, say, Mark Wahlberg. Now a successful film actor, everything's going Matt's way until he runs afoul of

[01:02] Gotham's most vicious and powerful crime lord, whose goons carve up Matt's pretty lord, whose goons carve up Matt's pretty boy face as punishment. Boo.

[01:15] recourse from either the law or from multiple surgeries until he seeks out multiple surgeries until he seeks out assistance from Dr. Caitlin Core. >> Now Caitlin, similarly down on her luck with her cutting-edge research having

[01:29] been recently ripped off by her former partners, when Matt comes to her volunteering to be a human test subject for her experimental AI-infused nanobot for her experimental AI-infused nanobot regenerative tech, she reluctantly says

[01:43] yes. All seems to be going well at first, but this movie ain't called Clayface because Matt's new skin care regimen worked out great. regimen worked out great. >> Hi.

[01:59] >> You okay? >> Yeah, I'm okay. >> Tom Reece Harries has a young Malcolm McDowell quality to him, as in like impish good looks that hint at an inner darkness. He never overplays the scenes

[02:13] despite there being opportunities of going big. >> And as sympathetically played by Naomi Ackie, Caitlyn is more misguided than

[02:25] mad scientist, despite being responsible for the physical monster Matt becomes. >> While her nanobots have infiltrated and altered Matt, the film suggests they've

[02:38] merely unlocked and amplified a very bad side of him that was already there. him allows the film to finally embrace its inherent absurdity and capitalize on

[02:54] the nastiness it was keeping at bay while it was trying to make him sympathetic. Once Matt is no longer the victim and becomes the gummy angel of death we've been waiting for, the film gets a

[03:06] new-found jolt of energy and unleashes some of its most clever, thrilling, and some of its most clever, thrilling, and darkly funny sequences. great use of Matt's power to shapeshift, but they also find the humor and tension

[03:22] in those situations, with Matt using his skills as an actor to literally inhabit a slew of different characters one after another as he takes his revenge.

[03:38] desire for vengeance fully consumes him, he devolves morally and physically into something truly monstrous. Clayface's comics and cartoon-accurate film's closing moments, but it effectively caps off Matt's tragic

[03:54] >> People I trusted betrayed me. The justice system failed me. >> Although it carries the banner of DC Studios, Clayface could have just as easily have been set outside of the DCU. Aside from taking place in the DC Comics

[04:08] locations of Gotham City and Coast City, there's nothing on display here that screams DC Comics. Still, Clayface proves that the DCU can offer more than just superhero fist-a-cuffs and save-the-world plots. The question

[04:21] remains though, how large of an audience there will be for such films. know you all want answered. Is the DCU's new Batman revealed in Clayface? No, he

[04:37] isn't. And Batman isn't even mentioned in the movie. However, there is a scene set at the Wayne Community Center, so there's that. But let's be clear, Clayface is set in the DCU. James Gunn has stated as much. Clayface director

[04:52] James Watkins elaborated on that when I recently spoke with him at the film's >> Yeah, I would say Batman exists in this world, but it's just not his story. It's Matt Hagen's story, right? So, it's just like in Joker, right? It's a city of

[05:04] several million people and we're telling one person's story within it. >> What would Matt Hagen think of like this vigilante running around and considering the system didn't do anything for him? >> Well, indeed. I mean, you know,

[05:19] not dissimilar in a way. He's a you know, he's a vigilante, right? But I guess ultimately maybe loses sight of the inner conflict with Matt Hagen between his heart and his you know, his head and

[05:35] Batman is you know, in charge of his behavior. >> Are you okay?

[05:49] co-CEO and co-chairman Peter Safran about Clayface's depiction of Gotham City, the first in the live-action DCU. I asked if this is what fans can expect Gotham to look like when Batman: The Brave and the Bold finally gets made.

[06:03] always said is that there's a consistency to the look, but the next filmmaker that tackles Gotham, they use it as a starting point. They can all feel different. I think each filmmaker, just the way great comic book creators

[06:17] same worlds and with the same characters in the comic books, we want each film to have its own reflection of the vision of the filmmaker. Gotham's not going to become Paris, and so I think that that's always going to be consistent. Walkins

[06:31] did a really good job layering in the darker, grittier feel, but you get a little bit of a sense of what money can buy you in Gotham. There's an elegance to it as well, a Beaux-Arts brilliance to it that can exist, but we that Gotham

[06:45] is a little dirty, is a little gritty, is a little dangerous. A little dirty, a little gritty, a little dangerous? Well, well, tell me you read IGN without telling me you read IGN.

[06:57] IGN. >> I'm a monster. its B-movie absurdity. It's a fun body horror romp that realizes its nasty potential in its final act, a very slow-burn setup. It may be a DC movie,

[07:14] but a casual filmgoer doesn't need to know any Batman lore to enjoy it. They things get squeamish. The film largely employs old-school practical makeup effects to cleverly and gruesomely depict Matt Hagen's transformations,

[07:29] with Tom Reece Harris' desperate, driven performance further selling the illusion performance further selling the illusion of a man becoming a monster.

[07:49] weekend? Let us know in the comments, and for more on the DCU, you're already and for more on the DCU, you're already in the right place, IGN.