Clayface opens in North America on October 23 and internationally on October 21.

It takes the film a while to find its groove, but once it does, Clayface delivers just the sort of nasty but fun body horror I was hoping it would.

Director James Watkins has fashioned a gritty throwback to not only the hardboiled revenge thrillers and low-budget horror flicks of the ‘50s and ‘60s but also to the cult classics of the ‘80s and ‘90s that paid homage to them. (Shades of The Fly, Darkman, and Johnny Handsome can all be found in Clayface.)

Based on the DC Comics character and working from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, Clayface follows rising young movie star Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a Gotham City native whose sketchy, hardscrabble background calls to mind that of Mark Wahlberg. Now a successful film actor, everything is going Matt’s way — until he runs afoul of Gotham’s most vicious and powerful crime lord, Markos Szabo (David Dencik), whose goons carve up Matt’s pretty boy face as punishment.

Disfigured and distraught, Matt finds no recourse from either the law or from multiple surgeries until he seeks out assistance from Dr. Caitlyn Corr ( Naomi Ackie ). Caitlyn’s similarly down on her luck, with her cutting edge research having been recently ripped off by her former partners. When Matt comes to her volunteering to be a human test subject for her experimental, AI-infused nanobot regenerative tech, she reluctantly says yes.

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