Clayface had all the pieces in place to be good. It centers on a tragic Batman villain who’s never really been done justice on the big screen before. It’s got the potential to deliver body-horror thrills unseen in a major comic book tentpole — and with its R-rating, to really deliver on them. And most importantly, it could be more than just a superhero movie; the story of an acclaimed actor who transforms into a shapeshifting clay monster was the perfect set-up for a good, provocative horror movie in the vein of The Invisible Man. The only thing is that Clayface makes half-baked gestures at all of these things, only to never really execute on any of them.
The issue may trace back to the original vision for Clayface, from Haunting of Hill House and Carrie maestro Mike Flanagan. Or, more specifically, that we never actually got this vision. Flanagan pitched his Clayface back in 2023, but scheduling issues ultimately prevented him from directing it. Instead, The Woman in Black director James Watkins stepped in to helm the DCU movie, with Flanagan co-writing the screenplay with Hossein Amini. The result is a movie that feels like it was Frankensteined together from better ideas, only to be flattened into a pale imitation of better horror movies before it.
