Critics split on Clayface, a gory DC body horror led by Tom Rhys Harries

A revenge story built on a ruined face

Clayface is a DC Studios film directed by James Watkins from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, part of the first wave of DC Studios films after Superman and Supergirl, according to AP. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a young actor who has just earned his first Oscar nomination. After a night out, Hagen gets involved with the girlfriend of a mobster, and AP reports that the mobster used a switchblade to cut open Hagen's face. Without his looks, AP writes, the actor's career is finished. Hagen then turns to Dr Caitlyn Corr, played by Naomi Ackie, a scientist testing an experimental nanocell treatment that repairs his face at first, though only temporarily. According to The Independent, the treatment also turns his flesh intermittently into putty, and that transformation drives his thirst for revenge.

What the critics said

Reviews of the film are split. Before the reviews appeared, a user on X asked who had requested a Clayface movie, and James Gunn answered by listing films such as Back to the Future, Casablanca and Weapons, according to AP. AP finds the film a surprisingly strong blend of revenge thriller, horror and romance, and a crowd-pleaser. The Independent judges it a strong body-horror film held back by its DC framing, and it praises Harries as a star to watch. The Guardian finds it very gory but not very good, while Het Parool says it is too tame for a horror film and too thin for a character study. TechRadar praises Harries and calls the film solidly sculpted body horror. The Telegraph's introduction frames it as stylish body horror with stomach-turning gore.

Gotham on a budget

The Independent says the film's Gotham looks more like Liverpool, with side trips to Manchester, and contrasts it with the smoky Gotham that cinematographer Greig Fraser shot for Matt Reeves's Batman. This film was shot by Rob Hardy, whom the outlet says struggles to build a distinct visual language. Het Parool says the budget did not stretch to make filming locations in Croatia and northern England convincing as American cities, which leaves the streets looking cartoonish. The Guardian likewise calls Liverpool an unconvincing Gotham City. Het Parool also notes that Gotham City stands in for New York and Coast City for Los Angeles in DC's universe.

Box office backdrop

The Guardian places the film against DC's recent results. Supergirl bombed at the box office in the summer of 2026, and experts believe it might have cost Warners upwards of $200m in losses. Superman grossed a solid $618m, a far cry from the $1bn heyday of the genre, and Joker in 2019 was the last DC film to pass that figure. The Guardian describes Clayface as an R-rated origin story with a markedly lower budget than the DC norm, allegedly the first film in a new Gods and Monsters strand. TechRadar notes that Clayface arrives four months after Supergirl's box office failure, positioning it as a test for James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Universe.