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“I think that’s triggering for most people in an audience,” director James Watkins says of the moment.
Key Points
- Clayface director James Watkins and star Tom Rhys Harries break down the new trailer.
- The pair share the scene that had even the crew averting their eyes.
- “There’s a thing with people’s eyes, which I think we all have,” Watkins says of the airplane bathroom scene involving sewing scissors.
On the set of Clayface, the first R-rated body-horror film from the DC universe, director James Watkins shot a scene with star Tom Rhys Harries where even some of the crew members had to avert their eyes.
As part of Entertainment Weekly’s exclusive breakdown of the new Clayface trailer, Watkins and Harries delve behind the airplane bathroom scene.
Inspired by the character of DC Comics, the premise involves the mutilation of Matt Hagen. The rising actor from Gotham City (Harries) sleeps with the girlfriend of a local mob boss, who then carves up his face in retaliation. Desperate for a fix, he syncs up with a scientist, Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who injects him with a serum that yields monstrous side effects.
Hagen finds himself on an airplane. He rubs his face and panics when his eyelids start melting — like clay — over his eyes. He rushes to the bathroom and finds a pair of sewing scissors, which he then uses to cut through his Silly Putty skin.
“This little section in the toilet was a cutaway on a sound stage,” Harries recalls.
“On a gimbal so it would shake, so it would move, so Tom had something to react to,” Watkins adds. “But obviously, there’s makeup and then there’s variations of scissors because those scissors are getting incredibly near his eye. We had real scissors, we had rubber scissors, I think we had scissors with a little bit missing. I think this is one of the times when you’re on set and you’re watching it and see people around the monitor going...”
The filmmaker mimics their reactions by throwing up his hands, turning his face to the side, and exhaling, “Aargh.”
“There’s a thing with people’s eyes, which I think we all have,” he acknowledges. “And then on top of it, there’s turbulence. So I think that’s triggering for most people in an audience.”
In addition to being a part of this superhero universe of Superman and Supergirl, the film (in theaters this Oct. 23) leans fully into the body horror subgenre. Matt’s full transformation into the monstrous Batman villain known as Clayface — a reveal the filmmaker says he’s saving as a surprise for theaters —was inspired by classics like The Fly.
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In the full trailer breakdown, Watkins and Harries share more movie-making secrets behind the film, including how Ackie’s Caitlyn Corr runs a nanotech company trying to stay afloat and is in a bit of a love triangle between Matt and her fiancé, Max Minghella’s Gotham PD detective John Pearlman.
Watch the trailer for Clayface above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
