Clayface review: DC's grossest movie ever is a slow-burn blast

DC has never made anything this disgusting.

And that, it turns out, is exactly why Clayface works.

The R-rated Batman villain movie opened at No. 1 at the US box office last weekend with $24 million, and it has already passed $47 million worldwide. That's a decent start for a film with no Batman, no Gotham skyline and no cape in sight, just a ruined actor, a vengeful streak and a body that won't hold its shape.

It's a slimy, gleefully gory revenge thriller with a breakout lead performance. It's also a film that takes far too long to show you what it's got, and how you feel about the first hour will decide how you feel about the whole thing.

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a rising actor whose face is destroyed by a mobster. An experimental treatment gives him his looks back, along with the ability to reshape his body into anyone he likes. He uses it to go after the men who ruined him, and slowly loses track of who he actually is.

You don't need to have seen a single DC film to follow it. Batman never turns up, and the movie is better for standing on its own.

Then the body horror kicks in

Once Matt's powers arrive, Clayface becomes a different and far more fun movie. Faces stretch, sag and rebuild themselves in close-up, and director James Watkins leans hard on practical effects rather than digital ones. You can feel the latex.

That's no accident. Watkins made his name with the British horror Eden Lake, and more recently the tense remake Speak No Evil, and the story comes from Mike Flanagan, the man behind The Haunting of Hill House. The finished film owes more to The Fly and The Substance than to anything in a superhero franchise, and The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck went as far as comparing its grimy style to David Cronenberg and Sam Raimi, calling it "one of the year's big surprises".

At the centre of it all, Harries is a revelation in his first big leading role. He plays Matt as vain, wounded and a little pathetic, so the revenge never feels heroic, and he sells every grotesque transformation with total commitment. The Times critic Ed Potton compared him to Demi Moore in The Substance, which is about the highest compliment a body horror performance can get right now.

Variety's Guy Lodge summed up the appeal neatly, calling the whole thing "fresh and ickily enjoyable". It's a B-movie that knows it's a B-movie, and it's at its best when it stops pretending otherwise.

The problem nobody can ignore

The trouble is everything before that. The first hour is slow, heavy on set-up and light on surprises, and almost everyone around Matt is paper-thin.

Naomi Ackie, so good as Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody and in last year's Mickey 17, is stuck playing a doctor who mostly exists to explain the science. Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan fare a little better as the men in Matt's way, but none of them get much to do beyond react to him.

The tone wobbles too, lurching between camp and grim without always landing either. That's why some critics bounced off it hard. USA Today's Brian Truitt called it an "unnerving, frustrating thriller", IndieWire's Kate Erbland labelled it an "ambitious misfire", and The Guardian gave it two stars, complaining that it looks as murky as a bland streaming movie.

They're not wrong about the murk. A lot of Clayface happens in dim rooms and dark streets, which suits the mood but buries some of the effects work it should be showing off.

Audiences, for what it's worth, are far kinder than the critics. Opening-night crowds gave it an A- CinemaScore, the kind of grade that usually means strong word of mouth.

So should you see it? If you loved The Substance, or you've been waiting for a superhero studio to make a proper horror film, yes. Clayface is in cinemas now, rated R and running 108 minutes, and it's worth catching on a big screen where the practical effects can do their thing.

If you're after a slick, Batman-style crime story, though, you can safely wait for it to stream.

Just go in knowing the first hour is a slow burn. Stick with it, because when Clayface finally lets loose, it's the most fun DC has had in years.