Clayface, the latest movie from DC Studios, is a villain origin story for the titular Matt Hagen – with copious amounts of body horror.
After being horrifically disfigured by a mobster, Matt – previously an up-and-coming Hollywood actor – gains shapeshifting powers after receiving experimental treatment from Dr. Caitlyn Corr. But, this comes with a terrible cost: when he gets too emotional, he can completely lose control of his body. The result is a grisly, R-rated horror flick.
"Well, I think if you're going to buy a ticket for a horror movie, it's like buying a ticket for a roller coaster ride, right? You don't want to buy a ticket for the really boring ride," Clayface director James Watkins tells us when we meet with him in London and ask why he wanted to take the film in this direction. "You want to buy a ticket for the really out there ride, the one with real ups and downs, the one that goes upside down and throws you around in circles."
To make his body horror, Watkins drew on some iconic inspiration. "In terms of movies, I guess I'd probably look back to the films that I really liked when I was growing up and drew inspiration from those, so whether that was a lot of David Cronenberg, body horror, obviously Videodrome, The Fly is a massive reference for this movie, obviously, The Thing, American Werewolf in London," he tells us. "Brilliant films that have the body horror, but they have a kind of humanity to them. They have a human story that grounds it, that makes you connect with the characters, and that's why I think those films are so good."
The film also makes use of practical effects, with Matt Hagen actor Tom Rhys Harries wearing facial prosthetics. "It kind of led it," Harries tells us of how that affected his performance. "We had conversations with James Watkins on set where I'd have prosthetics that were covering the majority of my face, but, say the scene was asking for something that was a bit lighter in tone, if I was to smile through these prosthetics, I learned fairly quickly that if I was hitting like a 20% smile, it wouldn't read as 20%, it would read at like two. So, I had to really push it. But then that speaks to the kind of trust that you have between you, the director, the DOP Rob Hardy, who I think has done a phenomenal job in terms of lighting this in a way that feels colorful, whilst also maintaining the dark, dingy essence of Gotham."
One particularly gruesome scene sees Matt attempting to cut his own eyelids open with a pair of scissors in an airplane bathroom, as turbulence rocks the flight back and forth. It's a difficult watch...
"I remember hearing crew members groaning off camera," recalls Harries. "Is that scene fairly heavily ADR? That day was quite fun, because you're doing it technically, right? And there's a lot of different departments that are involved in a sequence like that. On set, you have a video village, which is basically like a bunch of monitors and different departments using monitors for different things. But it was particularly busy that day, where people were just looking at the screen, because it's all in camera. You probably have a bit of digital smoothing around the edges of the eyes, but I'm really cutting through prosthetics in that thing, and I think that translates to a feeling when you're watching it."
"They brought in a big plane cabin, just the cabin, like the tube of it, where we had all our supporting artists, and that was on air bellows so it could move, so we could do the turbulence for real, sort of," Watkins says. "And then we had the bathroom, which was a separate little set, which was on a gimbal, which is a sort of device that you can rotate. And then Tom had the prosthetics on and the contact lenses. He had, actually, four pairs of scissors. There was a sharp pair, there was a dull pair, there was a rubber pair, and I think there was a pair that had the tip missing in case we needed to add it.
"But basically, he just sort of started getting stuck in with the sharp pair, and I was like, 'Are we safe? Are we safe?' And he's like, 'No, no, I got it, I got it,'" Watkins continues. "And I think most of the stuff in there is that. I'm sat there, and you've got lots of monitors on a film stage because, you know, hair and makeup, whatever, everyone has to check what's going on, check how it is, and I remember being at the monitors and people going, 'Oh my god,' and so I knew at that moment that we were tapping into something."
Naturally, a body horror movie is best enjoyed with a crowd. "It's amazing to see the audience react to it," says Max Minghella, who plays GCPD cop John Borrelli. "That's sort of the most fun part, is the communal experience of seeing this film in a cinema with a big crowd and getting to scream and giggle and have that whole thing together." Caitlyn actor Naomi Ackie, for her part, says she was "buzzing" to see the finished product for the first time.
"I watched it with Naomi and my agent," says Harries. "There were three of us in this big cinema in Soho, and I'm so proud of James Watkins and John Harris, the editor, and I think the film really plays and moves at a real – like, I love the pace of the film. And I'm not an objective judge of it, so I'm looking at it from a fairly technical standpoint, but I'm really proud of all the different departments and what we've got, and I'm so excited for people to see it."
Clayface arrives this October 23. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming DC movies and TV shows for everything else the DCU has in store.
