Oh, what a world, what a world…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Under the supervision of James Gunn and Peter Safran, so far the all-new all-different DC Universe has been a welcome improvement over the DC Extended Universe, which collapsed after one flop too many. Maybe Gunn’s storytelling instincts provide more insightful guidance to their filmmaking recruits than meddling Warner Brothers execs ever did. As a trade-off, though, Gunn’s edgier predilections lean toward content aimed mostly at “mature readers”, as the comics warning labels used to say back in the day. Apart from Superman and a small portion of Supergirl, the DCU’s reboots — especially on its HBO Max front lines — have been catered toward a more “adult” audience. Only a fraction of DC’s total comics output used to push that boundary, even during the Vertigo imprint’s heyday, but now it’s their TV/movie standard. The contrast isn’t lost on those of us who grew up in the mainstream-media era of a thousand articles proclaiming their shocking discovery from the outside looking in: “Zap! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just for Kids Anymore!”

Aiming for the R or the TV-MA too often means shutting out some of those prospective merchandise buyers, but it’s also afforded them the latitude to take bigger chances with lesser-known, weirder characters from the dustier corners of their IP catalog, or dabble in tales that don’t lend themselves to classic good-vs.-evil superhero morality plays. Prime example: grotesque body horror! Filling that totally unnoticed gap in DC’s genre spread is Clayface, which by all rights should’ve been duller. It’s an origin story for one of the oldest Batman villains who never got to fight Adam West and Burt Ward. (Not to be confused with False Face, who was a different guy.) The mucky, shape-changing second-stringer finally gets the spotlight courtesy of director James Watkins (The Woman in Black, last year’s Speak No Evil) and the joint screenwriting talents of Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove, The Snowman) and the very busy horror master Mike Flanagan (though do not get me started on Carrie). It’s a wild, disturbing throwback to superhuman revenge thrillers of yesteryear — say, Cronenberg’s The Fly or Darkman or, well, Carrie — with a warning to us all: with creepy power comes really creepy temptations.

The Gist: In this prequel to his DCU debut in Creature Commandos season 1 (where he and other characters were voiced by Alan Tudyk), Clayface introduces us to Tom Rhys Harries (from that one Doctor Who episode that was mostly an influencer Zoom chat) as Academy Award Nominee Matt Hagen, a rising Hollywood star whose rags-to-riches story is about to get to the “riches” part. Sadly, as with many a young actor, attending the wrong party leads to his downfall. Rather than a drug overdose, he frolics with the wrong flirt (Joana Ribeiro from Showtime’s The Man Who Fell to Earth remake) who happens to “belong” to Marko Szabo (David Dencik, a No Time to Die scientist and Chernobyl‘s Gorbachev), the head of one of Gotham City’s 600 crime families. As aggressively disproportionate retribution for her sins of omission and cheating, Szabo and his goons slash Hagen’s pretty-boy face into pulpy nachos.

Between his PTSD and his facial Deadpool-ification, Hagen’s all but certain he’ll never work in this town again, and of course he never planned for a fallback career where looks don’t matter, such as paid internet troll. When 21st-century plastic surgery and platitudes about inner beauty fail him, he turns to DC’s favorite consolation prize for bitter misfits: mad science! Enter Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Mickey 17‘s Naomi Ackie), hopeful developer of a nanobot-based drug that could give everyone Wolverine’s healing factor. A desperate Hagen volunteers to be her human guinea pig, though she takes some convincing because she isn’t Gotham’s usual kind of mad scientist. His initial trials are promising but the regeneration is only temporary, barely maintaining his original face for more than 1-2 scenes per dose. Given more R&D time, Dr. Corr could’ve refined the formula, adjusted the dosage, and talked him into therapy. Alas, Hagen is one of those really impatient patients who want to be well and achieve human perfection now now now.

So then comes the big drug-overdose downfall when he injects too much of The Substance and things go irrevocably sideways, though not quite as disgustingly as they did for Demi Moore. The side effects along his journey include frequent facial melting, panic attacks, moldable skin, aggro self-pity, immunity to physical attacks, and eventually the power to copy anyone else’s form and voice. With some practice he turns into Ethan Hunt without a moral compass, gadget budget, or compulsion to ride vehicles off cliffs. Some might consider this a blessing and become a superhero; in his fragile state and under Gotham’s bad influence, naturally his impulse is to hunt down everyone who ever wronged him and MAKE THEM PAY.

The familiar faces: Max Minghella (Horns, The Social Network) is Gotham City’s Only Honest Cop and Dr. Coor’s boyfriend, who doubly ends up on Hagen’s bad side when the latter’s psyche deteriorates and he gets kinda sweet on her. Joshua James (Andor, Down Cemetery Road) is Matt’s lifelong BFF who’s known him since his street-rat days, but is also an actor who by definition might be willing to cross a line for his own goals. Eddie Marsan (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Hobbs & Shaw) is Hagen’s manager, likewise compromised by definition.

Szabo’s henchmen include Will Coban (The Sandman‘s Azazel) and character actor Corey Johnson (last spotted in The Running Man). Rob Brydon (The Trip, The Gruffalo) is Gotham’s favorite talk show host who isn’t ripping off The King of Comedy.

The Impressions: You’d think a story about a man who imagines himself as other people for a living, who’s then granted the power to transform into other people, might delve into notions of self-identity, the fluidity of a damaged ego, and/or the dangers of losing oneself in Method acting. Harries has the chops to stretch himself tightly enough to capture the earnestness of a former poor kid who’s made something of himself, the heartbreak of having one’s achievements destroyed all at once, the blind rage of an empowered victim, and the overreaction of someone overpowered to the point of corruption. But with a runtime under two hours and so many enemies to track down, Hagen never really makes time for fully existential angst — no moments of fixating on his mirror a little too long while thinking really hard about how his actions are changing his very nature inside and out. All he gleans from his reflection is more anxiety over his cruelly deformed mug.

You’d think a cautionary tale about pharmaceutical hazards and lack of safety protocols might invite ethical discussions or thinly veiled Sackler family takedowns. Nope: in a radical change of pace, Dr. Corr has no apparent profit motives whatsoever. The mutation isn’t even her fault: Hagen took far, far above the recommended dosage and wouldn’t stand a chance if the film took a pedestrian turn and he tried suing her for damages. She’s not such a “mad” scientist after all, but she ends up making Dr. Frankenstein’s mistakes anyway. Her excitement about promising results leads to sloppy disregard for experimental controls. Same as Hagen, Corr’s given no time to think it through.

Maybe the two of them would’ve flourished if Flanagan had helmed this project solo and padded it out to eight ponderous episodes, like Lanterns. But the new DCU comes in all shapes and sizes, and at its heart Clayface is a lean, mean, broken-gene monster-movie machine with flashes of mordant wit and a valid excuse for brainstorming how many imaginative ways an amorphous changeling might destroy his opponents using goopy messes and/or their own mugs. Despite going all-out for its R rating, Watkins is oddly restrained, never quite reaching the nerve-shredding metamorphic madness of, say, Carpenter’s The Thing or Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraftian nightmares. Sometimes the surprises shock; at other times, we can predict when Hagen’s stepped in, as if he hopes we’ve forgotten what we learned from Mystique. (One of the funnier bits uses that classic SF gag where a character faces the star and their evil twin, and is forced to decide who’s the real one. Here, the gag is resolved with a certain cold logic.)

Much as I’d love to compliment the seemingly ace makeup work, the lines between the practical and the VFX takeovers. Several scenes focus on Hagen’s instant facial rearrangements, refusing to let the camera look away and often blurring the lines between makeup and CGI renderings, making it harder to appreciate the former when it dissolves too readily into the latter. Technically their teamwork makes the creature work, for what that’s worth. Regardless, that seamlessness doesn’t detract from the ambiance of old-fashioned popcorn-flickiness and shocking ickiness, serving up twisted antihero fun in the moment, with few loftier thoughts beyond that.

BUT: 500 demerits for taking a cheesy old Chicago song and running it through the Hollywood sappy-balladizing cover-machine to make it slower and terribler. I hate hate hate hate HATE when that’s done to classic singles all the time for trailers. I can only stomach so many unpleasant transformations.

The end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Clayface end credits, but contributors to the Clay-lore in the Special Thanks section include Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Sheldon Moldoff, Golden Age creators of yore; Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, and Xermanico, comics collaborators behind an integral origin-reboot one-shot from a few years ago; and Batman: The Animated Series bigwigs Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, among the first guys to pull Clayface off the printed page like a big blob of Silly Putty and slap him on TV screens.