Incorporates spoilers for Clayface and Resident Evil (2026).
2026 has been the 12 months of horror blockbusters. Most lately, the DCU’s Clayface has dominated the field workplace with its intense physique horror, first glimpse at Gotham, and compelling characters. After making one unhealthy determination — sleeping with a mobster’s lady — audiences watched Matt Hagan’s life crumble. He misplaced his fairly face, misplaced his likelihood at a profitable performing profession, and in the long run, his humanity.
The ending of Clayface exhibits a modified Matt Hagan, barely recognizable as the identical man who began the movie. The nanobots that repaired his physique have been destroyed, inflicting his relaxed kind to resemble clay greater than pores and skin. Audiences watched Hagan destroy all of his relationships, and the ultimate scene confirmed that the rekindling between him and Caitlyn Corr was nothing greater than his personal creation. Clayface is alone, and consistent with how monsters on display behave, his final motion is to roar on the digicam.
Clayface isn’t even the one man turned monster this 12 months to do that. Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil led to the identical means, though with a completely totally different that means. For Matt Hagan, his ending roar has cemented his descent into villainy. For Bryan Hodukavich, the descent has merely begun.
Protagonists Grappling with Monstrosity
Though each horror movies with medical pursuits, Clayface and Resident Evil are working in several sub-genres. Clayface is nearer to a Frankenstein story, emphasizing the hazards of untested medication and injecting non-human entities into the human physique. Corr is the physician who turns into the article of her creation’s obsession and suffers for it with the demise of her fiance, a person that Clayface tries to go himself off as earlier than Corr discovers the person’s physique. Resident Evil is as a substitute working within the zombie and mass medical outbreak style. Hodukavich isn’t being examined on, however quite — for a lot of the movie’s runtime — is attempting to keep away from those that have. An infection is spreading and Hodukavich is attempting to ship a bundle that might assist.
Hodukavich succumbs to the illness in the long run. He turns right into a monster, kills the final remaining scientist, and fails at his mission. Hodukavich sends the remedy plummeting off the roof of the constructing, dooming not solely himself however all people else. However in contrast to Hagan, it doesn’t ring as an ethical failing.
His quest wasn’t for revenge or to realize the higher hand. The film’s occasions are set off by his settlement to ship a bundle, which is hardly a villainous motive. His alternative although units him involved with these contaminated and though he’s in a position to battle his means by means of, he’s not in a position to do with out getting contaminated.
Whereas Hodukavich will get contaminated, it’s a acutely aware alternative Hagan makes. Hagan tracks down Caitlyn Corr after studying about her analysis and insists that she use him as a human guinea pig. Corr has already been testing on herself — after her funding was minimize and her buyers pivoted in the direction of utilizing Corr’s science for beauty functions — and even her fiance agrees that testing on Hagan could be a greater various than her present circumstances.
Corr is cautious however agrees, insisting on following what her analysis has deemed secure. Hagan, after all, is insistent on getting his face again. When his face seems to be malfunctioning, Hagan goes again to Corr. He takes the experimental process into his personal palms and doses himself, taking his ranges to double what Corr had labored out to be wholesome. She’s amazed that he’s alive and for the primary time, she hesitates on the thought of deleting the nanobots. Doing so, she believes, would kill him.
Hints at Completely different Futures
The ending of Resident Evil suggests one other battle in progress. Bryan Hodukavich has succumbed to the illness and mutated, letting out a roar simply as helicopters from the Nationwide Guard arrived. It’s now as much as the Nationwide Guard to take down Hodukavich together with the opposite contaminated. With the remedy veering off the roof, it’s unsure whether or not it may well nonetheless be attained in a single piece or if society is again to sq. one for curing the illness.
Clayface’s ending feels extra existential. He and Corr share a kiss just for the digicam to pan down and reveal that they’re linked by means of clay. Corr isn’t there in actuality, and as a substitute, Hagan is making a pantomime of her. He’s creating one which loves him when the true model doesn’t. It is a monster that wishes acceptance and love, not simply to contaminate.
The way forward for Matt Hagan can also be sophisticated by his ties to the expanded DCU. Clayface is current in James Gunn’s Creature Commandos, the animated sequence that’s the first official entry within the DCU. Whereas utilizing the identical voice actor because the Harley Quinn present, the Clayface in Creature Commandos is decidedly totally different and is supposed to be the identical character because the Matt Hagan that seems in Clayface. Due to this, Clayface is along with all of its different descriptors, a prequel.
By the point of Creature Commandos, Clayface is understood publicly as a supervillain and one that’s prepared to be paid for his providers. After committing homicide and different crimes, he’s caught and imprisoned. He’s even seemingly lifeless by the top of the season. Moreover, the longer term characterization of Clayface is manipulative and sadistic, a far cry from the virtually sympathetic Hagan present in Clayface.
What different connections have you ever made between these two blockbusters? Remark down beneath!