Clayface ★★★★

Released: 23 October 2026

Director: James Watkins

Starring: Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, Max Minghella, David Dencik, Eddie Marsan & Rob Brydon

There’s a moment in James Watkins’ Clayface which is not for the faint-hearted. It follows Matt Hagen (an excellent Tom Rhys Harries) on a flight back to Gotham after talent agents court him – his acting comeback awaits. He watches the in-flight news as mobster Markos Szabo (David Dencik) announces he’s moving into the movie business. Triggered, he rubs his face, and it morphs as his eyelids start to seal shut. In a state of panic, he rushes to the bathroom, removes a pair of scissors from his carry-on bag, and proceeds to separate the skin by cutting through his eyelids, all while the plane is going through extreme turbulence. An act that’s enough to make you recoil in your seat.

Clayface comes as a genuine surprise. Given the low expectations after the narrative messiness of Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl or the tonal imperfection of James Gunn’s Superman, Watkins’s villain origin story is freaky, nasty and gloriously horrifying. Unlike DC’s last villain foray with Joker, Clayface has a better mould to shape itself from. Its commitment to its body-horror remit provides squirmish suspense throughout. Less campy and more grounded, it’s attuned to a Gotham that could sit believably adjacent to Matt Reeves’s Batman. And while the caped crusader doesn’t feature (a welcome relief so Clayface can remain self-contained), the same seeds of corrupt underbellies and injustice persist enough to believably birth a monster like Clayface. Watkins’s film isn’t perfect, a little slow and drawn out to get to its next shocking reveal. But it’s one of the more assured outings from DC, a risk that shows off the potential of Gunn’s proposed ‘Gods and Monsters’ phase. 

While there are still question marks over how far ‘Gods and Monsters’ will proceed after this Warner Bros./Skydance merger, at least in the present, Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini’s screenplay understands the complex tragedy of its titular character. Matt Hagen is not a villain chasing power or some world-ending MacGuffin. This is a character actor with a chameleon-like gift, beset by his own fears of insecurity, vanity, and not living up to everyone’s expectations. It’s a subtle nod to the Hollywood system itself: an alluring infrastructure built on wealth and self-worth for easy commodification. In some ways, Flanagan and Amini infer this as a monster of its own, one that can show you glory, fame and riches before spitting you out and leaving you in The Narrows, something Hagen falls victim to. One minute, Hagen is receiving Oscar nominations, appearing on talk shows, giving motivational speeches to aspiring actors and skipping queues at nightclub parties. The next, one naive yet arrogant mistake puts him in the firing line of Szabo, leaving his face gruesomely slashed, his reputation in ruins, a criminal justice system that failed him and a world doubling down to reject him.

Just like the two-part Feat of Clay episodes from Batman: The Animated Series, Hagen’s tragic downfall comes from a desperate willingness to reclaim his glory days. Yet Flanagan and Amini don’t abandon that descent into villainy. They infuse just enough material to get you on board with his plight, before watching him slowly unravel towards a twisty, vengeful hell against those who wronged him. 

These moments take shape when Hagen meets Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), a nanotech doctor who treats his experimental facial regeneration. As Hagen’s condition improves, so does their growing attraction to each other. Hagen sees someone who finally sees him beyond his former celebrity status. Meanwhile, Caitlyn, who is engaged to be married to her Gotham PD detective John Borrelli (Max Minghella), sees the full extent of her scientific experiment working, with devastating consequences.

Watkins tonally evokes Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, Curry Barker’s Obsession, and David Cronenberg’s The Fly to cement this unnerving adventure. By comparison, Clayface is the weakest of the bunch, as those examples found ways to up their own disgusting ante with more depth to explore. Yet, Clayface’s slow-burn theatrics revel in its ‘nightmare fuel’ creations thanks to the film’s incredible VFX and prosthetics team. Each phase of Matt’s transformation is treated like a steady escalation, and the more extreme Matt’s condition worsens, the more prolonged the torture of blood and gory exposures that dwell slightly longer on screen than most people could endure. And for a horror genre that is often repeatedly accused of being predictable, Watkins certainly finds inventive ways for character deaths. 

In posing the question of ‘how far are we willing to go to sacrifice our humanity’, the excellent performances of Harries and Ackie greatly underpin this. They fully embrace the film’s wacky premise, scenes which only amplify the tension in their growing relationship. In one scene in particular, as Caitlyn monitors Hagen’s sleeping patterns, she watches in horror as he morphs into her likeness, before producing one of the best jump scares of the year. It’s deliberately creepy and toxic, and when Matt’s powers push him beyond redemption, that’s when all of its ‘Chekhov’s Gun’ pieces finally come together during a third-act nightclub scene. In its chaotic mix of dance, subterfuge, and body-morphing masquerades, it’s a just reward for a patient buildup.

There’s nothing better than watching a film have fun, and Clayface serves up the right ingredients of shocks and awe. By owning its gory direction, it gives DC a new lease of life, one receptive to the bold choices that stop it from being your ‘typical comic book film’. And in doing so, we get something that has always been appealing with Batman’s Rogues Gallery: villains who are more than just skin deep.