THE RISE OF THE SUPERHERO HORROR
words by TIANA DE HASETH
DC’s Clayface has just brought body horror out of the comic book world and into the big screen. As a superhero horror film, it revisits a hybrid genre we haven't seen in decades. While we are mostly familiar with traditional, life-saving superheroes, this horror aspect challenges our perspective on body, horror, and identity.
all images via LETTERBOXD
Clayface, DC Studios’ horror thriller directed by James Watkins, follows Matt Hagen, a rising Hollywood actor who's looking for a physical transformation that ends up leading him down a disturbing path. After a brutal attack by a local crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured, his career and identity gets completely shattered.
Desperate to fix his good looks, he seeks out an experimental treatment involving nanotechnology from a scientist named Dr. Barrett. While the treatment successfully allows him to rebuild his features, it grants him grotesque superhuman abilities: the power to mutate, stretch his flesh, and shape into other people, but at a severe cost.
However, this genre of superhero films is nothing new. During the late 1980s and 1990s, comic-book-inspired films truly embraced the grotesque type of imagery and unconventional heroes. Films such as, The Toxic Avenger became a great example of the genre's more outrageous side. More recently, Brightburn reimagined the familiar origin story of a superpowered child through the lens of horror, and The New Mutants brought supernatural terror into the world of the X-Men.
These films show how the superhero mythology can be turned into something frightening and I think that’s what makes this intersection so interesting, because it challenges our expectations from the type of superhero films we are used to seeing. Unlike Marvel’s Peter Parker, his tragedy of getting bit by a spider, turns him into superhero, but a hero's powers can also become a curse, turning their body into a prison. After years of being saturated with interconnected universes and world-saving spectacles, horror brings an alternative way to explore the darker implications of extraordinary abilities.
Even though the contrast of superhero to horror sounds unconventional, Clayface could offer something different by placing the human body at the centre of its terror. Rather than focusing on the usual themes of heroism, responsibility, and saving the world, the film explores more of the psychological consequences of transformation. Matt Hagen’s desire to restore his appearance shows us how far someone might go to reclaim the person they once were – which is not far from something we are seeing today in our society and era of “looksmaxxing”. So, what begins as an attempt to regain control over his life slowly turns into a nightmare in which his own body becomes something he can no longer fully recognise or control. Ultimately, that realisation is a horror in its own right.
