Clayface (2026) Review - A Grisly, Gritty Swing for DC Studios
Directed by James Watkins from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, Clayface is part of the first wave of DC Studios films under James Gunn and Peter Safran. It is a revenge thriller with the grit of Death Wish that borrows as much from Taxi Driver as it does from The Invisible Man. It is also a romance of a sort, a body horror film, a supervillain origin story, and a sharp satire of Hollywood’s worship of beauty. That is a lot to carry for a comic book character most casual viewers have never heard of, and the film mostly manages it by being a little something for everyone, much like its title character.
Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, a handsome young actor from the wrong side of Gotham City whose work has finally earned him an Oscar nomination and the industry recognition he’s long craved. He celebrates at a nightclub, and from there he ends up spending the night with a mobster’s girlfriend. To no one’s surprise, the mobster does not take it well, and he carves open Hagen’s face with a switchblade. With his money-maker ruined, Hagen believes he is finished.
But Matt’s salvation arrives in the form of Dr. Caitlyn Corr, a scientist played by Naomi Ackie whose specialty is nanotechnology. Hagen volunteers to be her first human test subject, and she injects him with an unproven serum of stem cells that begin repairing his destroyed face. It works, but only temporarily, before Matt’s face appears to begin melting before his eyes and Corr has to find a way to stabilize the experiment. The chemistry between doctor and patient turns out to involve more than science, and she has a fiancé besides, suggesting a problematic pattern for Matt.
From there, Clayface is all about the race to bring the volatile experiment under control, as well as Hagen’s bloodthirsty revenge. The film handles both with a confidence that surprised me, and it never lets either one fully take over. The satire is where it finds its sharpest edge. “This business is all surface,” Hagen is told by the agent who dropped him. The stem cells in his face are described as Method actors. A talk-show host says to him, ominously, “There’s so many of you. It must be hard to find the real Matt Hagen.” A man whose entire career depended on his face has been given the ability to become anyone, and it costs him whatever was left of himself.
The body horror is what will make many dedicated DC fans squirm, and it works because so much of it is practical. This is the rare film in the superhero genre in which you can feel the textures. One of the film’s best body horror sequences takes place in an airplane bathroom, where Hagen tries using scissors to cut through the skin that’s begun fusing together over his eyes. There is an undeniably gritty quality to the picture that’s much appreciated after so much expensive bombast from Marvel and DC. Parts of Gotham were shot on real streets in Liverpool, and the filmmakers favored practical effects over computer-generated. It gives us our first real look at what Gotham City looks like in Gunn’s DC Universe, and it looks grimy, lived-in, and dangerous, which feels exactly right.
And on that note, it’s worth saying something about the larger picture being painted here. Between Supergirl, Lanterns, and Clayface, DC Studios has given us three very different projects this year. One a space-faring adventure starring a supporting hero from the Superman mythos, one a True Detective-style drama about fathers and sons introducing one of DC’s flagship Justice League heroes, and now a grisly revenge thriller giving us the origins of a Batman villain. All of them are promising, to varying degrees, and all of them suggest a studio willing to let its filmmakers take real swings, which is the thing the superhero genre has most needed. That variety is encouraging. It also makes the nine-month wait for next year’s Man of Tomorrow feel a little more grueling than it otherwise might.
Clayface is in theaters now.