In Review: ‘Wildwood,’ ‘Clayface’

(Programming note: We have a lot of reviews this week. This is the first of three installments. Look for reviews of The Only Living Pickpocket in New York and A Talent for Murder later today. Then come back tomorrow for our takes on Possible Love, Wicker, and Fatherland.)

Wildwood
Dir. Travis Knight
131 min.

Even before the film fully settles into depicting a magical kingdom filled with talking animals and other strange creatures, Wildwood already seems fantastic. Despite warnings from her crunchy parents (voiced by Jake Johnson and Maya Erkine) not to take her infant brother Mac (voiced, in giggles, cries, and gurgles, by Arthur Knight) out of their home, teenaged Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth) dumps him in a wagon hitched to her bike and sets out to explore Portland. It’s a city familiar to the staff of Laika, the stop-motion animation studio that calls the area home, and to Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, the Portland-based writer/artist team behind the illustrated novel that Wildwood adapts. (Meloy also has another job.) Wildwood recreates the city in loving detail, from a cityscape seen against the backdrop of the surrounding wilderness to local landmarks like Powell’s Books to the artists and eccentrics that give it character. It’s a lively, colorful, welcoming place that makes Prue’s parents’ warnings seem silly.

But it’s not Portland that should have Prue and Mac worried. Shortly after Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), an RPG enthusiast classmate Prue considers herself too cool to call a friend, joins the siblings’ outing, a flock of determined crows—a “murder,” as Curtis points out—whisks Mac away to the Impassable Forest, a nearby wooded area that locals do their best to avoid. But, sensing they have no choice if they want to rescue Mac, Prue and Curtis head inside anyway, where they soon encounter a group of talking coyotes dressed in Napoleonic-era military uniforms. Their adventure only gets stranger from there.

Directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings, Masters of the Universe) from a script by Laika regular Chris Butler, Wildwood sends its heroes across an expansive realm filled with conflicting forces that include a group of feared (but maybe not that fearsome) bandits led by a Bandit King named Brendan (Mahershala Ali), the bird-filled Avian Principality, a land of ancient ruins filled with mystics both human and animal, and a totalitarian region ruled by the Dowager Governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) who has never been the same since the death of her son. But she has plans to remedy this, dire plans that involve Mac and lend an added urgency to Prue and Curtis’ quest.

If there’s a problem with Wildwood, it’s one of overabundance. The film unspools a headspinning amount of lore alongside dozens of creatures great and small, from a noble giant eagle (Angela Bassett) who comes to Prue’s aid to the helpful rat Septima (Awkwafina) who becomes inseparable from Curtis. The miniatures used to make it might be small, but Wildwood has epic designs. It doesn’t take long, however, for the film’s heart to come to the fore and any confusion about who’s fighting whom to recede to the background. The deeper the heroes plunge into the Impassable Forest, the less likely their chances start to seem and the heavier the weight of looming adulthood and responsibility weigh on Prue. Wildwood might not technically be a coming-of-age story, but it captures the feeling of realizing for the first time that life has taken you to a point where parents can no longer save the day.

As wondrous as the world of Wildwood is, the film establishes a sense of danger early on with shots of bodies left behind after a battle, then ratchets it up as it becomes clear that not every character will make it to the end of the story alive. The set-up recalls Spirited Away but the violence and intensity are closer to Princess Mononoke. That’s especially true of a climactic battle sequence that’s at once fantastically stirring, emotionally heightened, and tragic. Its clashing actions, arrow-filled skies, and dramatic duels also further confirms Wildwood as a magnum opus, one that pairs a sweeping story with stunning animation in the intricately detailed, handcrafted style unique to Laika. We’re in the midst of a moment in which computer-created slop threatens to overwhelm art made by human imaginations and hands. Wildwood works as a stunning rebuke to the former and a towering example of the possibilities offered by the latter. —Keith Phipps

Wildwood arrives in theaters tonight.

Clayface
Dir. James Watkins
108 min.

The first year or so of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s efforts to reinvent the cinematic and television extensions of DC Comics have made clear that they see the DC universe as a place that can play host to all sorts of stories, from traditional superhero tales to space westerns to animated shows filled with rude humor. So why not horror? Clayface, a new film set in the DCU, brings a character who’s traditionally served as a Batman villain to the big screen as the star of a movie in which Batman doesn’t even get a mention, much less make an appearance. Rather than getting beaten up by the Dark Knight (who may not have made his debut when this story takes place), he serves as the protagonist for a tale of revenge and gooey flesh. It works well enough to confirm that, yes, the DCU can be home to multiple genres, including some that don’t even need superheroes. But the novelty of taking place in a comic book-inspired universe doesn’t mean a horror movie shouldn’t have to succeed on its own terms. 

Though it eventually settles there, Clayface begins far away from the mean streets of Gotham City that Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) once called home. After years of hard work, he’s become a movie star celebrating his first Oscar nomination, a triumphant spirit he brings back to his old hometown after jetting in for a talk show appearance. Then Matt makes the mistake of hooking up with Mia (Joana Ribeiro), the fetching moll of the fearsome Gotham godfather Markos Szabo (David Dencik). Shortly after waking up beside Mia the next day, Matt is greeted by thugs who cut up his face. Then, not content with ruining his good looks and derailing his career, they smear him in the press and leave him with nothing when Matt insists on pursuing a civil trial. That also leaves him with nothing to lose. So when Matt learns about the work of Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a scientist who’s experimenting on repairing the human body using nanotechnology, he offers himself up as a human guinea pig. There are, Matt soon discovers, consequences to this decision.

For a sizable stretch, Clayface—co-written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini and directed by James Watkins (The Woman in Black)—works well as a nasty piece of body horror that riffs on David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Caitlyn turns Matt into a new man but her cutting-edge science has some flaws baked into it. When Matt gets angry or otherwise overstimulated, his new flesh starts to malfunction, melting like candle wax or, in one tough-to-watch scene, sealing his eyelids shut in the midst of a turbulent flight. Before long, however, Matt learns he can control his new skin to assume the appearance of others and exact vengeance on those who’ve wronged him.

It’s this revenge mission that ushers in the character’s heel turn. It also marks the moment when Clayface loses focus of what initially made it compelling: Matt’s attempt to recover from a fall from grace and his growing closeness with Caitlyn. Rhys Harries looks the part of a chiseled movie star but he’s just as convincing as a humbled and misshapen outsider and his scenes with Ackie have more chemistry than might be expected of a movie so filled with images of peeling skin and mutated bodies. Once the attention turns to action, the film becomes a rote exercise in murder and mayhem. (Watkins has a real flair for moody ominousness but not much to offer when it comes to gun battles.) There’s undoubtedly a space for this sort of movie in Gotham and elsewhere in the DCU. They just need to be better. —Keith Phipps

Clayface oozes into release tonight.