Movie Review: ‘Clayface’

10/31/2026 by Corrye Van Caeseele-Cook

Plot: Based on the well-known Batman villain, director James Watkins’ Clayface follows the travails of actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries). After a sexual encounter with the girlfriend of Gotham crime boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik), Szabo’s henchmen disfigure Matt’s face with a knife. Subsequently, Matt’s life implodes as Szabo avoids prosecution due to the corrupt Gotham police department, his agent abandons him, and his manager Frank (Eddie Marsan) swindles him out of all his money. Desperate, Matt turns to fringe scientist Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) who’s developed a nanite treatment capable of restoring damaged tissue. Although the procedure is successful, the side effects prove devastating as Matt descends into madness and begins a destructive path of revenge. This path eventually leads to his ultimate destiny: becoming the villain known to the world as Clayface.

Review: Since James Gunn became co-head of DC Studios (along with Peter Safran) several years ago, the reborn DCU has delivered projects that while not spectacular, have been remarkably solid. Apart from the misfire of Supergirl, I’ve found every DCU release at the very least entertaining. One of Gunn’s edicts when he took over was that the new DC universe would be varied in topics and tones. Based on Gunn’s declaration it wasn’t a shock to me personally when Gunn greenlit a Clayface movie in late 2024. The fact that writer/director Mike Flanagan (Hush, Doctor Sleep) pitched the idea and wrote the script had me profoundly excited. But could a film based on a Batman villain, where the titular hero hasn’t even appeared yet, work?

Although Clayface doesn’t reach the lofty heights of Superman, it proves to be a mostly entertaining body horror flick, spearheaded by a dynamite performance from Tom Rhys Harries and an eerie, dreadful, and propulsive score from Oscar winning composer Volker Bertelmann.

While I was watching Clayface, I couldn’t help thinking of the gritty, grimy horror and action flicks I used to watch in the 1990s on late night cable. Clayface seems ripped right out of a Saturday night special presentation on HBO or Cinemax. Think of movies like Richard Stanley’s Hardware or Sam Raimi’s Darkman but with a dash of Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel or Abel Ferrara’s King of New York and you’ll be somewhere in the ballpark.

Additionally, Clayface really plays up the body horror elements to massive effect. The violence is in your face and personal, with Matt’s disfiguration by Szabo’s cronies even more horrendous and visceral than you’ve seen in the trailers. Whether it’s syringes, scissors, or choking on clay-like nanites, Clayface proves to be an equal opportunity gross-out fest. It severely gets under your skin, if you’ll pardon the pun. A scene between Matt and his best friend Corey (Joshua James), that includes a great nod to The Godfather Part II, was particularly harrowing for this viewer. That said, Clayface never quite reaches the lofty heights of Videodrome or The Fly, something it clearly aspires to be.

At a tight 108 minutes, director James Watkins (The Babysitter, Speak No Evil) keeps the pace brisk and breezy and the tension cranked high. Clayface never commits the sin of overstaying its welcome. Watkins is clearly not David Cronenberg, but he knew exactly the type of grindhouse film he wanted to make and it mostly delivers. I particularly enjoyed how Watkins juxtaposes the colorful glitz and glamour of Gotham high society with the grit and grime of Gotham’s seedy underbelly. The corruption and the crime are a thick layer of slime lurking just below the flashy veneer of Gotham’s upper echelon. Addiitionally, the climactic third act scene in a Gotham night club where Matt enacts his ultimate revenge was shot impeccably by Ron Hardy and had me smiling in triumphant delight the whole time.

Unfortunately, where Clayface falls flat is in the screenplay itself. Some of the dialogue is truly awful. It’s trite and cringe-inducing, to the point where one wonders how it even made it onto the page let alone the screen. The main villain, Markos Szabo, is so bland and poorly written that’s he’s easily one of the most forgettable antagonists in recent comic book movie memory. Moreover, Clayface occasionally descends into melodrama, especially when it comes to the romantic aspect of Caitlyn and Matt’s relationship.

While the aforementioned script issues are not anything other critics and moviegoers haven’t already pointed out, I do believe there’s one thing not being talked about enough. Yes, Mike Flanagan did hand in the initial screenplay, but co-screenwriter Hossein Amini subsequently performed a page one re-write. While I can’t say for sure, I feel that there was a much darker, tragic, and character driven story in Flanagan’s original screenplay. I can’t help but wonder what that movie would have looked like and if it would have been better than what we got. What’s perplexing is it’s not as if Amini is some kind of hack. The man has been nominated for an Oscar for The Wings of the Dove and wrote the classic Nicolas Winding Refn film Drive. This smacks of studio interference.

What Clayface lacks on the printed page, it makes up for with the stellar performance of Tom Rhys Harries in the lead role. I only knew Harries from his work in 2019’s The Gentlemen and the Doctor Who episode “Dot and Bubble,” but I hope this performance catapults him to the next level. Harries’ Matt Hagen is charming, charismatic, kind-hearted, and warm at the outset, and you need that in order to connect with his plight. Yet Harries also excels at exhibiting Hagen’s insecurities and self esteem issues, especially when his attack happens and the subsequent cure. As Matt descends into madness, his insecurities blow up into full-on narcissism, sociopathy, and homicidal tendencies. By the end of the film, the Matt Hagen you once knew is completely unrecognizable and only the villain Clayface remains.

Despite the occasionally corny dialogue, a few thinly written characters, and a lament for the potential of what could have been, overall, I had a good time with Clayface. It’s a rollicking, entertaining, revenge/body horror yarn that anyone who was a fan of late-night 80s and 90s cable movies will thoroughly enjoy.

Just don’t expect much beyond that.

My rating system:

1 God Awful Blind Yourself With Acid Bad

2 Straight Garbage

3 Bad

4 Sub Par

5 Average

6 Ok

7 Good

8 Great

9 Excellent

10 A Must See