‘Clayface’ is a gross, creepy indictment of Hollywood culture

We are, evidently, in Oscar season — the insufferable period that, admittedly, produces a reliable number of above-average movies but also elicits a stream of sanctimonious blather from movie stars. Too often, they speak of their work with self-regarding reverence and, if handed a gold statuette in a few months, will deem themselves qualified to expand their purview to American politics and international affairs. And they do so while imagining themselves to look flawless. It’s kind of hard to take.The new DC Studios’ movie Clayface is not going to win any Oscars, certainly not in acting categories, but it displays a devilishly invigorating honesty about movie stars and their delusions that serves as a swift rejoinder to the season. Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, a chiseled actor whose career is on the upswing, including receiving an Oscar nomination for his most recent movie, when his face is hideously maimed. But the ease with which Matt pursues and undergoes dodgy-sounding procedures to make his appearance once again palatable is framed as an indictment of the preening narcissism of his profession. Matt plainly covets good looks above all else, and he refers to the “nanocells” in which he places his hopes as “method actors” due to their capacity to shapeshift. This is a fairly pointed satire in the guise of a comic book movie.Part of what makes Clayface work is its narrow scope and defined premise: the movie, which blessedly clocks in at well under two hours, is content to state and restate its essential theme without getting bogged down in fan service or backstories. My understanding is that Clayface has its origin in the Batman comic books, but the Caped Crusader is nowhere to be seen, and the fact that the film is set in Gotham City is largely incidental. For me, these count as wins. The movie is effective because it is brisk and focused, and it does not condition admittance on passing a test about the DC universe. Its smarts surely derive in part from a screenplay credited to two especially talented modern screenwriters: Mike Flanagan, our chief contemporary expositor of Stephen King, and Hossein Amini, who, a generation or so ago, wrote one of the smartest Henry James film adaptations, The Wings of the Dove (1997). Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen in “Clayface.” (Taghizadeh/Warner Bros. Pictures) Do not misunderstand me: Clayface is not Henry James. At all. But the script scores points about the mindset of a modern movie star. In his pre-disfigurement state, Matt is heard superciliously rehearsing a completely insignificant line (“I love you, Beth”) while being chauffeured to the studio, and, when there, he plunges his face into an ice-water bath. Later, after getting word of his Oscar nomination, he logs an appearance on the fictitious Vic Chissler Show, whose host is a kind of unholy mashup of Graham Norton, Craig Ferguson, and James Corden.Equally accurate is the film’s depiction of the feckless abandon with which Matt risks his worldly success. At a party whose debauchery is made clear by participants who repeatedly take shots of alcohol and suggestively dance to strobe lights, Matt accepts the highly questionable invitation to cavort with actress Mia Torrez (Joana Ribeiro), who happens to be the significant other of an all-powerful mafioso, Markos Szabo (David Dencik). Among the film’s cleverest touches is to imply that the Mafia and the movie industry are in cahoots to such an extent that goons are present on set when Mia has a kissing scene with another actor.In an implicit warning against premarital sex that might have seemed over-the-top even in the era of the Motion Picture Production Code, Matt is found to be in bed with Mia by Markos, who proceeds to disfigure his face while a cooking show plays on TV in the background — the sort of grimly comic grace note the film excels at.Fair warning: Clayface is truly stomach-churning as it presents Matt’s injuries and his subsequent, only somewhat successful surgeries, but it seldom lingers on such details. Instead, director James Watkins seems rightly eager to elaborate on the underlying idea of Matt’s journey as a study in vanity. While flipping through a lifestyle magazine whose cover he graced, Matt happens upon a feature story about Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who hopes to deploy nanocells to fix cells damaged by degenerative diseases. Naturally, Matt insists that this untested technology be deployed on him immediately; in one of the film’s funniest moments, he calls the doctor perhaps three seconds after she emails him that she is willing to talk further. And in one of its most telling moments, Matt seems less overjoyed than smug when the nanocells seem to have restored his handsomeness. He has the typical actor’s combination of arrogance and entitlement.REVIEW: ‘YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING’ IS SPECTACULARLY STRANGEThis does not last long. In an exceedingly creepy side effect, Matt’s face buckles and wilts after a certain period, and, more ominously, involuntarily assumes the characteristics of others’ faces, especially if he is physically assaulting them. Ackie is an understated performer here, but her character’s complete nonchalance about the wild unintended consequences of her technology is one of the movie’s least believable aspects. Let us hope that the otherwise sharp screenwriters intended the line “What’s wrong is your skin just reattached itself to your hand” to be deadpan humor.Clayface wends its way to its conclusion with Matt, who increasingly resembles the title creature, in pursuit of Markos and the other thugs — some of whom he impersonates, with his face’s remarkable moldable qualities, as he’s attacking them. This is all relatively well handled, and the film achieves a kind of perfect metaphor for the mutability of movie stars in the image of Matt — er, Clayface — melting into a Gotham City storm drain. For much of its running time, this movie is an odd mixture of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Death Becomes Her (1992), and Vanilla Sky (2001), but during that moment, it might have been called A Star Is Flushed.Peter Tonguette is the Life & Arts editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.