Actual Clayface review: Plenty of people will just enjoy the performances and generic beats that Clayface has to offer. It's inoffensive in that way. Strong cast, safe writing. If you're happy with that, Clayface will please you. Zooming in a little more... Clayface has a similar structure to The Crow but lacks all the things that make The Crow interesting and cool. Everything felt weightless to me. Part of that is because most of the characters are generic tropes without any real opportunity to distinguish themselves. The rest of it is because the stakes are so hollow. For example, there's that scene from the trailer where Matt's on an airplane and his eye lids start to seal shut. He goes to the lavatory and takes out a pair of scissors and starts trying to cut the excess skin. EXCEPT, OH NO, THERE'S REAL BAD TURBULENCE!!!! THE SCISSORS ARE NEAR HIS EYE AND THERE'S TURBULENCE!!!!!! OOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! In wrestling, there's a term called "cheap heat" where a heel can get a crowd to boo by saying some super obvious thing. Like if you're in Boston and you say "The Red Sox suck." The crowd will react. You get boos. But it's considered low effort, lazy. The turbulence scene is the writing equivalent of cheap heat. Yeah, the turbulence "increases the stakes" but like...it doesn't matter. With the turbulence or without, the result is the same. It's only there to give viewers a momentary sense of stress. But here's what makes it extra silly. The film just established a few minutes before this that Matt is essentially invincible due to these nanobots. Whatever damage he incurs, the nanobots heal. He cuts way down his face and heals almost instantly. That means there are literally no stakes when his eye lids start to close. Which makes the scissors and turbulence thing all the more ridiculous because if he had hit his eyeball, it would have been fine* (for those who have seen the movie and are starting to write a comment, check the top comment, where I address exactly what you're going to say). It feels like there's almost a meta-side to Clayface because it feels like it's sometimes imitating other movies. Like there's a quick shot where the camera pans past a factory with a flaming chimney that makes you think of the opening shot from Blade Runner. Was it a nod to Blade Runner or not? There's a red bathroom, like in The Shining. But is it a nod to The Shining or not? At times, it makes you think of The Substance, but there's no way it's referencing The Substance, is there? And then The Crow. And the whole thing feels like it's recycling aspects of The Penguin, with the whole villain prologue that involves the mob and the protagonist is an anti-hero but also too villainous to be an anti-hero so is just kind of a nascent version of their full villain self. Except The Penguin you have stakes and developed characters. Where Clayface is an amalgamation of tropes. Oh, Max Minghella doing a Columbo bit the entire time lol. If that meta-level was there, that's cool. But it also didn't feel coherent enough for me to be like, "The film was doing this really cool thing!" On its own, Clayface is just fine. As the third film in James Gunn's DCU, it's puzzling.