I saw Clayface last night, and mostly liked it. I appreciated the fact that it’s a movie set in Batman’s Gotham City, with no appearance by the guy with a cape, and no rehashing of Batman’s origin in the murder of his parents. It is set in the Gotham City milieu, which is an annoying flaw done only to draw in the comic book fans. It’s a bit grim. There’s a scene with a young woman alone walking into a subway that was the worst, most daunting cavern of industrial gloom which no one in their right mind would enter. Clayface is an interesting story set in the darkest environment.

It’s also a very dark story. It could have used a little contrast to alleviate the oppressive atmosphere.

I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone who is repelled by body horror. I’m undaunted by knives and needles and blood to the point that I have to offer another criticism: the scenes with blood were nowhere near bloody enough to be realistic. Of course, the notion that nanotech-infested flesh could crawl and reshape itself at will (I have concerns about the metabolic activity required, as well as the amount of information involved) is even more unrealistic, but that was the core premise of the movie.

However, the appeal of the movie is that finally it lifts the imaginative possibilities of a comic book movie out of the stultifying conventions of the past comics. Clayface may not be the great movie that is going to be taken seriously as a good drama, but I like the fact that I could walk into that theater and not know the direction the story was going to take.

Ugh. I am clayface. I just got back from the dentist, a filling on the left and another on the right, and now my face is totally numb. It’s supposed to wear off before my class, which is good, since I’m at risk of serious drooling right now.