As if there were any doubt left, Clayface is officially going to be a full-blown R-rated body-horror movie. The MPA […]
As if there were any doubt left, Clayface is officially going to be a full-blown R-rated body-horror movie.
The MPA handed the upcoming DC Studios film an R rating for “strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use.”
That is one hell of a ratings descriptor for a movie based on a Batman villain.
James Gunn and director James Watkins (Speak No Evil, The Woman in Black) have repeatedly promised that Clayface is a genuine horror movie rather than a traditional comic-book blockbuster wearing horror as a costume. Now we know Warner Bros. didn’t force them to sand down the edges for a PG-13.
Based on the spectacular full trailer released this summer, they apparently weren’t exaggerating. The footage was loaded with grotesque transformations, melting flesh, and one particularly nasty airplane sequence in which Clayface’s eyelids begin fusing shut before he reaches for a pair of scissors.
The film stars Tom Rhys Harries (White Lines) as Matt Hagen, a Gotham street kid whose meteoric rise to Hollywood stardom is destroyed after a crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured. Desperate to reclaim his former life, Hagen undergoes an experimental treatment that restores his appearance but begins destroying his grip on reality, sending him down a path of transformation and revenge.
Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice), David Dencik (No Time to Die), Max Minghella (Spiral: From the Book of Saw), and Eddie Marsan (The World’s End) also star.
Watkins directed from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) and Hossein Amini (Drive), based on a story by Flanagan. Gunn, Peter Safran, Matt Reeves, and Lynn Harris produced.
