Clayface

If you ever wondered what David Cronenberg might do with a superhero film, the latest DC offering might offer a clue. Director James Watkins (Eden Lake) looks at a second-tier Batman villain and takes him from tragic, romantic hero to a Frankenstein’s monster via a series of stomach-churning physical transformations. The result is a stylish crime drama that’s also one of the ickiest body horrors since The Substance.

Welsh actor and relative newcomer Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a Gotham-born pretty boy who’s risen to Hollywood star status. (Sorry, ‘Coast City’ star status.) He returns home for a late-night TV interview but, while partying afterwards, falls foul of local gangster Markos Szabo (David Dencik). Hagen is left gruesomely scarred, abandoned by the justice system and virtually penniless after what looks suspiciously like fraud by his manager (Eddie Marsan). A ray of hope comes when he learns about Dr Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who’s developed ‘nano-cells’ to treat degenerative disease that might also work for his face. But after he overdoses, they bring unexpected side effects.

The story, by The Haunting of Hill House’s Mike Flanagan and Drive’s Hossein Amini, sticks very closely to a conventional revenge tale: deeply wronged guy turns on his persecutors. So far, so Sam Raimi’s Darkman. What’s unusual is the relish with which Watkins shows Hagen’s mutilation, surgery and subsequent treatments. There’s real sadism in Szabo’s attack on him, and the way his nano-cells respond when Hagen is distressed or angered is unpredictable and often unpleasant, ranging from causing his face to droop like he’s suffering a stroke to flashing into the likeness of his persecutors. One emotional moment, on a plane, causes his eyelids to begin to seal up in mid-air, like Keanu’s mouth in The Matrix: it’s the most superfluous scene in the film and the most memorable.

This dark superhero movie is pleasantly old-fashioned

Both the story and the rain-sodden, grey-and-neon look make Clayface a noir in all but name: betrayals, thugs and femmes fatales shaping the hapless Hagen’s story. There's a gothic sort of romantic spark between Hagen and Corr – although she’s already engaged to one of Gotham’s rare honest detectives, John Borrelli (Max Minghella) – and a mutual fascination that could be his lifeline or her undoing. Watkins keeps the plot spare and the pace unhurried as Hagen’s tragedy unfolds. For all its visual invention, this dark superhero movie is pleasantly old-fashioned.

Unlike other comic book villain-centric stories – Venom, say, or Joker – Watkins keeps you guessing whether any part of the deeply sympathetic Hagen is redeemable, and manages to stick the landing better than any of those other villain arcs. His movie’s Gotham, a twisted reflection of the American dream, is fascinating too. 

It’s the best DC film in years – if your stomach can stand it.

In cinemas worldwide Fri Oct 24.