The good news for DC Studios is that Clayface is landing mostly positive notices. It sits at around 74 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, well above the 52 percent earned by DC’s last outing, Supergirl, though its Metacritic score of 59 points to a more divided field.
Directed by James Watkins (Speak No Evil, Eden Lake, The Woman in Black) from a script by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, the film follows Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a Gotham-born Hollywood star whose face is mutilated by crime boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik). Desperate to get his life back, he turns to scientist Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) and her experimental nanocell treatment, which restores his looks and turns him into a shapeshifter bent on revenge.
The stakes are fairly low. With a budget of about $40 million, modest by superhero standards, Clayface doesn’t need to be a blockbuster to turn a profit. It’s projected to open north of $20 million this weekend, facing surprise competition from the documentary You Can See Everything.
The raves
The film’s champions mostly praise it for committing to the horror. The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck called it “one of the year’s big surprises” and said its grimy look and pulpy dialogue earn comparisons to David Cronenberg and Sam Raimi. Time Out went further, calling it “the best DC film in years – if your stomach can stand it.” She argued that, unlike Venom or Joker, the film keeps viewers unsure whether Hagen can be redeemed, and that it lands its villain arc better than either.
The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin welcomed how little the film feels like franchise product. Apart from the odd mention of Gotham, he wrote, you could walk out without realising you’d seen a comic book movie, which he counted as a rare win at a time when studios are taking few risks. Consequence called it “the scariest, freakiest movie ever made based on a DC Comics property.” Slant’s Jake Cole described it as a sturdy horror-thriller in its own right and, as an indirect setup for a new Batman, “a stroke of brilliance.”
The practical effects are the most widely praised element. Variety’s singled out one sequence, involving fused eyelids, nail scissors, and heavy turbulence on a plane, as nightmare fuel. The AP’s Mark Kennedy also flagged that scene and enjoyed the film’s “charming low-rent vibe” after years of expensive superhero spectacle. He noted that Liverpool stood in for Gotham’s streets. IGN said the film works best when it leans into its B-movie absurdity, that its final act pays off a slow-burn first half, and that viewers need no Batman knowledge to enjoy it. Collider recommended it as a cure for superhero fatigue.
The middle ground: Great monster, thin movie
Many critics were split down the middle, and the most common verdict was that the horror works while the story doesn’t. The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey summed it up as “a great body-horror movie but a terrible DC Comics film,” while still calling Harries a star to watch. ScreenCrush’s Matt Singer made a similar case: the film never digs deep as a character study, but as an icky horror movie it really does get under your skin. GamesRadar reversed the framing. As a superhero film it stands apart from anything DC or Marvel has made, but as a horror film its thrills are only skin-deep.
AwardsRadar called it “fine,” enjoyable for gorehounds but short of The Fly or The Substance, with a better movie buried inside it. Empire gave it three stars, praising Harries and the bloodshed but finding little depth.
The pans: Shapeless, derivative, and not very Gotham
The detractors’ complaints mostly concern the script and its lack of identity. RogerEbert.com’s Brian Tallerico gave it 1.5 out of 4. He argued that it borrows heavily from Cronenberg’s The Fly, down to a romance doomed by melting body parts, without the thematic focus that made “Cronenbergian” horror work.
The film touches on Icarus, playing God, celebrity vanity à la The Substance, and even AI, but commits to none of them. Tallerico suggested Flanagan and Amini may have fallen victim to a blockbuster machine that sands down complex ideas until the result is “defiantly shapeless.”
USA Today’s Brian Truitt called it “a messy DC miss.” He praised Harries and the effects but said the screenplay does almost nothing with Matt as a character and, oddly for a Batman-adjacent project, doesn’t use Gotham as a character either. Looper raised the same point, describing a Gotham that might as well be a nameless city and a film that feels like leftover pieces of Flanagan’s original vision mixed with franchise-friendly rewrites. The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee (2/5) went harder. He called it as poorly lit as a bland streaming movie and mocked its non-American cast for trying to out-accent one another. He also argued that Clayface’s powers are so loosely defined that the character becomes a plot convenience.
Polygon (36/100), likened it to a weak superhero movie with the hero removed, and Rolling Stone (20/100), which compared watching it to eating a handful of Play-Doh.
Inverse said that despite strong work from Harries and Ackie, it was “a failed experiment that should’ve never left the lab.” The Playlist found it ironic that a film about obsession with appearances turned out better at producing striking images than at finding meaning beneath them.
The consensus
Almost everyone agrees on two things: Tom Rhys Harries is excellent in his first major lead role, and the practical effects are gleefully disgusting. The disagreement is over whether that’s enough.
Fans of grisly B-movie horror, and anyone tired of interchangeable superhero spectacle, will likely have a good time. Those hoping for a richer character study or a real taste of Batman’s Gotham may leave wanting more. As AwardsWatch put it, Clayface may be remembered more for its ambition than its execution, but it shows that a comic book movie can still be small, strange, and nasty.
One practical note: there’s no post-credits scene.