Technically, Clayface — based on the DC character’s adventures in print — is a comic-book movie. And sure, it’s set in Gotham City, and there’s mention of a “clown” here and there. But this is a film that requires no previous DC Universe knowledge — only a strong stomach.
Tom Rhys Harries, an actor whose star is on the rise, plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose star is on the rise. Charming, handsome and newly award-nominated, Matt has everything going for him. That is, until he sleeps with a mobster’s girlfriend, and receives a horrifying comeuppance — his chiselled, screen-ready face is sliced to pieces. Matt loses his roles and his agent, and throws good money after bad on surgery that leaves him scarred and unrecognisable.
Desperate to regain his face, and the fame and fortune it brought him, Matt turns to experimental scientist Caitlyn Corr (Mickey 17 and Blink Twice’s Naomi Ackie), and volunteers as a human-trial test subject for her nanocell technology, designed to regenerate damaged tissue. It works, sort of, but also unleashes a whole host of disturbing side effects that send Matt into a violent spiral.
Clayface is a continuation of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Universe, the third big-screen entry after 2025’s Superman and this year’s Supergirl — but is pitching itself very differently in tone and genre to the previous movies. Both of those were PG-13, cape-wearing superhero romps; Clayface is a bleak, bloody character-study-slash-origin-story, earning its R rating through balls-to-the-wall body horror. Think the meta-acting narrative of A Different Man meets the outlandish, escalating gore of The Substance, plus a sprinkle of the Polyjuice Potion scenes in Harry Potter, and you’re pretty much there.
Tom Rhys Harries feels like the perfect subject for all of it.
The initial attack on Matt comes very early, with not as much build-up as you’d think but plenty of impact, the overhead shot of chief wrong’un Markos Szabo (David Dencik) slashing the star’s mouth with a penknife (just one of several Joker-esque visual nods) as he’s pinned down truly wince-inducing. But with that, the nastiness is only just getting started. There’s fleshy surgical stuff; a watch-through-your-fingers plane bathroom scene involving half-closed eyes and nail scissors; an unexpected spine extraction; a stand-out nightclub massacre sequence; and enough face-melting to put you off ever watching The Great Pottery Throw Down again. Director James Watkins (who most recently impressed with his James McAvoy-starring version of social-boundary-pushing thriller Speak No Evil) really is pulling no punches, employing remarkable prosthetics and genuinely new-feeling CG bodily transformations to make every cut, peel and stab as visceral as possible.
Harries feels like the perfect subject for all of it: his big eyes, high cheekbones and sharp jawline are both a vessel for Matt’s star quality on talk shows and red carpets, and an ideal canvas on which his artificially intelligent new cells wreak havoc. We’re not given much time to get to know pre-attack Matt, and his descent into mushy madness happens at pace, but Harries manages to make even the most unlikely character swings feel convincing. His connection with Ackie’s sincere, empathetic Caitlyn (who is given even less dimension and development than Matt) is crucial to keeping you invested, and the film keeps that at the forefront during all of Matt’s ups and downs.
But all that brilliant body horror can’t quite make up for Clayface’s script being so — aptly — skin-deep, especially in its exploration of the themes behind its protagonist’s many transformations. Its recent forebears feel like they explored similar terrain more successfully: The Substance was a powerful examination of the pressure of adhering to conventional beauty standards; A Different Man interrogated what makes someone attractive, inside and out.
Clayface gets nowhere close to this level of thought-provoking, instead adhering to the tired trope of visible facial differences being feared, reviled, something to cure or hide. It is Matt’s differences that become his power, eventually — but this is a villain story, after all, and any catharsis is experienced via Matt’s quest for revenge rather than any kind of empowerment. Remove its fleshy, liquescent mask, and you’ll not find a lot of memorable meat underneath, but at least Clayface’s brutal exterior offers savage delights.