Sometimes you go to the movies because you’re excited about what’s playing. Other times you just want two hours with somebody else’s problems. I fell into the second category as I rode the endless escalator up to the Scotiabank Theatre, hoping the movie would be worth the climb.
I’ve always wondered how I’d fare in a comic book. I suspect I’d make a terrible damsel in distress. I'd interrupt the villain's monologue, ask why he thought any of this was a good idea and probably tell Batman he was late. Some people were born to brood on rooftops. I was born to ask follow-up questions.
But I digress. I just wanted to be entertained.
Clayface delivered.
Rather than another superhero spectacle, director James Watkins gives us an old-fashioned horror story with a film noir sensibility and an unhealthy obsession with Hollywood beauty. Inspired by Feat of Clay, the two-part episode of Batman: The Animated Series from 1992, the film remembers something that series understood beautifully: a villain can be tragic without being innocent.
Meet Matt Hagen, played brilliantly by Tom Rhys Harries, a Hollywood leading man whose face is his fortune. A risky investment in a town where birthdays are treated like hostile takeovers.
One of the film’s smartest moments comes immediately. Hagen plunges his face into ice water before a makeup artist begins massaging it, pulling and stretching his features like soft putty.
Before Hagen becomes Clayface, Hollywood is already sculpting him.
Even before his disfigurement, Hagen’s face unsettled me. Handsome, certainly, but lean and slightly weathered, as though life had already put him through a few unpleasant auditions. I found myself studying his features, searching for imperfections.
Then it hit me. The poor man hadn’t even become a monster and I was judging his face as though I’d personally financed his cheekbones.
Well played, Mr. Watkins.
Following a horrific attack, Hagen is left hideously scarred and turns to experimental scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr, played by Naomi Ackie. Their relationship develops with surprising tenderness, revealing two love stories: one between Hagen and a brilliant woman trying to help him, the other between Hagen and his own reflection.
The second needs couples counselling. The mirror needs a restraining order.
Harries is terrific, transforming from Hollywood golden boy to grotesque outcast. The film never drags, although it certainly makes you squirm. One particularly uncomfortable sequence involves Hagen performing facial surgery on himself in an airplane lavatory with tiny scissors. The killings are equally inventive. One victim suffocates as clay fills their mouth and nostrils. Suffocation by pottery. Suddenly, those innocent little ceramics classes don’t seem quite so relaxing.
Happy Halloween.
But here’s where Hagen lost me.
I understood his desire for vengeance. What disturbed me was how much he started enjoying it. There’s a difference between wanting justice and discovering that murder is your hidden talent. Apparently, Hagen wasn’t finished with show business. He’d simply found a new audience to kill.
Which brings me to Max Minghella’s detective John Borrelli. I wanted more of him. In Gotham, corruption practically comes with the property taxes and a decent man might be the least believable special effect of all. Hagen wants revenge. Borrelli wants to make things right.
Then there’s the question of beauty. Filters, fillers, Photoshop. Apparently, a human face is now considered a rough draft. We don’t take photographs anymore. We negotiate with them.
Clayface takes that obsession to its grotesque conclusion. Hagen doesn’t simply lose his face. He loses the way the world looks at him. Funny how quickly other people’s personalities change when your appearance does.
Grotesque, romantic and surprisingly thoughtful, Clayface is a horror movie with something on its mind besides finding new ways to dispose of people. Although it’s remarkably talented at that too.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve always loved comic books. Villains get the extraordinary powers and usually the better costumes. Heroes get the less glamorous job of doing what’s right. I’ve always believed in that.
By the time I rode back down the Scotiabank escalator, I’d learned three things: beauty is a terrible investment, revenge is an even worse one, and I apparently have no business judging a stranger’s cheekbones.
Hagen can keep his thousand faces. I’ll keep mine.
As for Batman, I have one question for the World’s Greatest Detective.
How does a man turn into a murderous pile of clay in Gotham City without attracting your attention?
Alfred, I’d like to file a missing-person report.