‘Clayface’ review: A gruesome DC horror film with body horror that gets under your skin
Most superhero villains arrive already angry. Matt Hagen arrives with a smile and a film career about to take off, and that is what makes everything after it hurt.
‘Clayface’ spends its opening stretch making you like him, and the film is much better for it.
Matt (Tom Rhys Harries) is a young actor on the edge of fame, and his face is the only thing he has ever really owned. When a mob boss ruins it, the film does not rush to the monster. It stays with a lonely man who cannot stand what he sees in the mirror. His desperate plea for a cure, and the unapproved treatment that follows, feel less like a comic book setup and more like a bad decision any frightened person might make. The price is a body that no longer obeys him. It stretches, melts, and it can become anyone or anything, sometimes just because a thought crosses his mind.
Tom Rhys Harries carries all of this. He plays Matt with a soft, almost boyish hurt, so even his worst moments leave you uneasy about whose side you are on. Naomi Ackie, as the doctor caught up in his mess, matches him scene for scene and gives the film a human anchor when the flesh starts to move. Both performances are the strongest reason to buy a ticket.
The body horror comes next, and it is not for the faint-hearted. It’s really unsettling and if you cannot handle that, this movie is not for you.
Director James Watkins, whose earlier work includes ‘Eden Lake’, ‘The Woman in Black’ and ‘Speak No Evil’, clearly knows how to make an audience squirm. The transformations are wet, slow and ugly. The visual effects deserve real credit here, because the horror works as much on feeling as on shock.
Volker Bertelmann’s music helps a great deal too. His score is eerie and mournful, and it keeps pressing on the sadness underneath the gore. Rob Hardy’s cinematography gives Gotham a cold, grimy look that suits the mood.
The writing is where the film wobbles. Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini share the script credit, and the idea at its core is a good one, but the execution is uneven. The dialogue can be blunt, though it rarely feels out of place. The revenge story follows a route most viewers will have walked before, and a few of the twists can be spotted from a long way off. There are also good ideas that pop up and then vanish before they get a proper chance. As a villain, ‘Clayface’ sometimes feels more familiar than he should.
Still, it is a pleasure to see a comic book film choose a smaller, sadder story over another city-wide explosion. At 108 minutes, it does not outstay its welcome, and the pacing stays tight. Gotham is named, yet the film never says which version of that world it belongs to, so newcomers will not feel lost and Batman fans can fill in the blanks themselves.
‘Clayface’ is a solid, nasty horror film with two excellent performances. The movie released in India on October 23, 2026.
Rating: 4/5