Clayface is the comic-book movie that does not want to be one, and that is why it might work.
Gunn’s DCU is sending a melting man into theaters on September 11. For once the ‘it’s actually horror’ line is the honest one.
The Clayface trailer is a dressing room and a body that will not stay a body. That is not a teaser for a cameo. That is a horror movie that happens to know where Gotham is. September 11 is a brutal date for anything, and it is a fascinating date for a film about a man who cannot keep a face.
DC has spent twenty years trying to make grim mean ‘adult.’ This is the first time in a while the grim looks like a genre instead of a brand guideline. If Matt Hagen is the point, an actor, a disease, a city that only loves him when he is useful, then the movie can sit next to The Fly and still pay the rent to the cape department.
Stop asking comic movies to be universes. Ask this one to be a monster.
I would rather this swing and be disgusting than another competent origin that explains a power set. Supergirl already did the cosmic hangover. Lanterns is doing prestige murder. Clayface is the test of whether the DCU will let a film be minor in the best way: one monster, one city, one bad miracle.
Buy a ticket for the makeup and stay for the question the trailer is already asking. If you can be anyone, what is left that is worth being?
Original commentary based on public reporting. Not a reprint.