Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead Helped Shape Clayface’s Horror Tone

We already knew Clayface was going hard into horror. Sam Raimi’s influence gives us a much better idea of what kind of horror director James Watkins actually wants to make.

Watkins told Empire, in comments reported by GamesRadar+, that Sam Raimi was a major influence on the film, specifically the way Raimi is willing to push horror so far that it becomes extreme, exaggerated, and sometimes almost ridiculous without losing control of the audience. He described that boldness as something he wanted to bring into Clayface, where the filmmakers can acknowledge that what we are seeing is completely over the top and still ask us to go along with it. Brian De Palma was another major influence on the movie’s style. 

That is a more interesting piece of information than simply hearing again that Clayface is going to be gross. The trailer already established the body horror, Matt Hagen’s disfigurement, and the painful transformation at the center of the movie. Watkins is now giving us a clue about how the film may behave once it gets past that setup.

What Clayface Is Borrowing From Sam Raimi

When I think about Sam Raimi’s horror, restraint is not the first word that comes to mind. The Evil Dead is nasty and aggressive, but Evil Dead II is where Raimi really starts showing how far he is willing to bend tone without breaking the movie. Ash can be terrified one minute and fighting his own possessed hand the next, blood can spray in completely impossible quantities, and the camera itself can feel like it is attacking the characters. By Army of Darkness, Raimi has pushed those instincts even further until horror, slapstick, fantasy, and live-action cartoon logic are all sharing the same movie.

That seems to be the part Watkins is interested in. He is not talking about copying Deadites or turning Matt Hagen into Ash Williams; he is talking about having the confidence to push a moment beyond what feels reasonable and trusting that the audience understands the movie knows exactly what it is doing. Raimi has always been especially good at finding that line where something can be grotesque, funny, and genuinely unsettling at the same time, and Watkins appears to see that freedom as useful for a character whose body eventually stops obeying normal rules altogether. 

We broke down what the full Clayface trailer reveals about Matt Hagen’s transformation and the movie’s body horror.

What these new comments add is the possibility that the finished movie may become much stranger than that trailer initially suggests. The footage is dark, painful, and uncomfortable, but Raimi’s influence makes me wonder whether Watkins intends to stay at that exact emotional pitch for two hours or whether the movie will eventually allow Clayface’s abilities to become as bizarre as they probably should be. A character who can reshape his face, stretch his body, imitate other people, and eventually stop looking remotely human has almost unlimited potential for visual insanity. Trying to keep all of that completely grounded might actually be more limiting than letting the movie occasionally go too far.

Brian De Palma Adds Another Piece to the Puzzle

Watkins also named Brian De Palma as an important influence, which points toward a different part of what Clayface may be trying to do. Raimi and De Palma obviously make very different kinds of movies, but both are filmmakers who want you to notice the filmmaking. The camera moves with purpose, perspective gets manipulated, tension is built visually, and scenes are often constructed in ways that would not work the same way if they were simply photographed from across the room. Watkins has previously talked about studying De Palma with cinematographer Rob Hardy, so hearing him bring that influence up again suggests that this is more than a passing reference. 

Put those two influences together and the combination starts to make sense for Clayface. Raimi brings the willingness to push horror into excess, while De Palma brings a more controlled visual approach to suspense and perception. That could be especially useful in a story built around someone losing control of both his appearance and his identity, because the movie does not have to rely only on prosthetics or effects to make Matt Hagen’s experience feel unstable. The way Watkins chooses to show us what Matt sees, what other people see, and what we are allowed to understand could be just as important as whatever Clayface eventually looks like.

There is also one Raimi movie I cannot stop thinking about here, even though Watkins has not named it as a direct influence: Darkman. Raimi’s 1990 film follows a horribly disfigured scientist whose synthetic skin allows him to temporarily assume other identities, and it moves between tragedy, horror, revenge, superhero storytelling, and completely unhinged comedy without ever fitting neatly into one genre. Darkman and Clayface are obviously different stories, but disfigurement, unstable identity, changing faces, revenge, and a protagonist becoming increasingly monstrous make the comparison difficult to ignore. If Watkins is borrowing Raimi’s willingness to let a movie move between tones rather than just copying the gore of Evil Dead, Darkman may end up being the more useful comparison.

What We Think

This is the kind of Clayface news that gets me more interested than hearing for the tenth time that the movie is going to be disturbing.

Amy and I recently went through the entire Evil Dead franchise, and Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness were two of the movies that worked best for both of us. What makes those movies fun is not simply that they are bloody or funny; it is that Raimi commits completely to both sides of that equation. He can make something genuinely gross, push it one step further than you expect, and somehow turn that excess into part of the entertainment without making the horror feel meaningless.

That is what I hope Watkins is taking from him. Clayface is already built for body horror, so making his face move or his body distort is almost the obvious part. The more interesting question is whether Watkins has the confidence to keep pushing once the transformation is underway. If a hand stretches too far, keep going. If a face reshapes itself into something that is horrifying and somehow funny at the same time, let it. Clayface should probably be one of those characters where we occasionally stop and wonder what exactly we are looking at.

The De Palma influence makes that even more promising because it suggests Watkins is thinking about more than effects. If he can combine Raimi’s willingness to go completely off the rails with a more deliberate visual style, Clayface could end up feeling very different from both a standard DC movie and a conventional body-horror film. The trailer already convinced me that Watkins is willing to make this uncomfortable. These comments make me much more curious to see whether he is also willing to make it weird.

Watch the Clayface Trailer

Sources: Empire via GamesRadar+, DC Studios.