The last time we heard The Flaming Lips' psychedelic rock ditty 'Do You Realize??' in a James Gunn produced film, it was 2023's Guardians Of The Gal
The last time we heard The Flaming Lips’ psychedelic rock ditty ‘Do You Realize??’ in a James Gunn produced film, it was 2023’s Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, a comic book movie in which several destitute, defenceless creatures find themselves horribly disfigured and mutilated — trying to reconcile what’s inside with what they see in the mirror. The same tune plays again over the first full trailer for James Watkins’ upcoming DC Studios body horror Clayface, a comic book movie in which… well, you get the idea. See Tom Rhys Harries’ actor Matt Hagen going through some, er, changes below;
You wanna know how Matt Hagen got these scars? Well, as we learn in this deeply unnerving novel trailer for Clayface, it’s an unfortunate run-in with the mob that leave the promising actor with life-changing injuries, driving him to seek out an experimental scientist (Naomi Ackie) who provides him with the rejuvenating drug — the substance, you could say — that will eventually turn him into the movie’s titular malleable malcontent. And if the glimpses of Hagen’s monstrous transformation we get here — a melting face, the classic silhouetted form of DC’s blobbiest baddie, and a wince-inducing incident involving some fused eyelids and a pair of nail scissors — are anything to go by, then it looks like the DC Universe’s Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini penned movie is going all out (and surprisingly practical effects bulky) on its massive genre swing.
The official synopsis for Clayface — which also stars David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll, and Joshua James — reads: “Matt Hagen’s meteoric rise from Gotham street kid to Hollywood leading man is tragically cut short when a local crime boss’ actions leave him horribly disfigured. Abandoned by his team and with nothing left, Matt seeks out a cutting edge treatment that miraculously returns him to his former self … but also unexpectedly affects his grip on reality, spiraling him down a destructive path of all-consuming revenge.”
One of the rogues’ gallery standouts of the classic Batman: The Animated Series, mid-noughties toon The Batman, and DC’s Batman comics, Clayface is long overdue a big-screen outing to draw out the terror — and the tragedy — of the character. We’ll see whether Speak No Evil filmmaker James Watkins’ movie breaks the mould and delivers an r-rated DC Studios banger when Clayface oozes into cinemas on 23 October.
