Director James Watkins and writer Mike Flanagan channel the classic Batman: The Animated Series origin for the grotesque shape=changing villain Clayface through the lens of Sam Raimi’s Darkman by way of The Substance to create a compelling film absent the titular hero.
CLAYFACE (2026)
★★★ & 1/2 ★ of ★★★★★ stars
The 1990’s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series is responsible for a lot of modern pop culture’s most well-known and popular characters and character interpretations. Harley Quinn was created on this cartoon and is DC’s most popular female character. The tragic backstory for Mr. Freeze on this show was so popular it replaced the character’s canon comic book origin and was even utilized in 1997’s Batman and Robin as the origin for that film’s version of Freeze. Another character whose rendition usurped it’s comic origins was Clayface. Reimagined as a brooding tragic figure and a victim of his connections to organized crime, actor Matt Hagen (voiced in the cartoon by Ron Perlman) found himself a victim of circumstances who searches for revenge against those who made him disfigured. Even as that revenge makes him even more of a monster than he started off. Flanagan’s love for this rendition led him to pitch a Clayface film to James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios and now here we are with a feature length Clayface film, directed by James Watkins and starring Tom Rhys Harries as the titular Clayface.
Harries plays the Matt Hagen version of the character; an actor on the rise who has just been nominated for an Academy Award. He goes out to celebrate and is hit on by a would-be actress named Mia Torrez (played by Joana Ribeiro) who is also the paramour of Gotham mob boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik). They sleep together and Szabo and his men find them. Szabo forgives Mia and decides Hagen is to blame as he viciously disfigures him by slashing up his face and cutting off his nose. The practical makeup work here is really gruesome. The gore in Clayface is really intense and done well. It’s much more gory and disgusting than The Substance, from whom it takes a lot from in terms of influence. Hagen loses everything as a result of this accident; Szabo plants stories that Hagen took advantage of Mia, his public profile is destroyed, he loses his Oscar, his manager (played by Eddie Saffran) steals his money and sets him up with a crooked doctor and he ends up living in a tenement in Gotham’s Narrows. In his anguish, Hagen finds an article about a scientist named Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackies) who is specializing in nanites that can repair degenerative tissue. Hagen reaches out to her to try and get her to help heal him. She is initially resistant but he appeals to her sense of duty and secretly and slowly gives him doses of nanites which gradually heal him. She advises him to lay low but he makes a big show of showing off his healed face, only to have it start to mely in a heated argument with his former agent. He runs to her office, where she tries to help him. He freaks out and takes all of her nanites and shoot them into his face to try and heal himself which turns him into a gooey mess. He recovers with her help, but they boith discover the nanites have replaced all of his cells and can become anything he thinks of. At first it’s subconscious; his anger triggers his insecurities to make him the deformed creature he was before he met her. But in his sleep, he becomes perfect copies of whatever he dreams of in one of the film’s trippiest sequences.
Soon, Hagen realizes he can use his abiliyties to get revenge for everythign that was taken from him and this leads yo some glorious big screne horror carnage. Watkins paces this all well, with great combos of practical effects, contortion artists, and CGI blending to create Clayface’s ballet of revenge. The film really shifts into a revenge thriller with gory action here. In many ways, it’s very reminiscent not just of Clayface’s cartoon origins, but Sam Raimi’s Darkman, with a disfigured victim using synthetic skin to get revenge on the scientists who wronged him. But the film is also a great ensemble and the chemistry between Harries and Naomi Ackies’ Caitlyn really drives the film. Hagen slowly becomes obsessed with Caitlyn as Szabo’s men target her for her fiance’s crusade against Szabo (a great turn by Max Minghella). He feels as if he loves her because she can calm his rage and he wants to make her his – no matter what the form.
Uusually, I’m not a fan of these comic book villain as protagonist without the hero films. Venom is the rare exception, but Clayface joins that pantheon. Clayface can exist in a world without Batman, especially as the character is an actor, giving Flanagan and Watkins lots of room to evoke classic films as a backstory. There are references to films like The Shining and The Godfather Part 2 that add that extra Easter Egg layer for film fans but don’t take away from the movie. There are no Batman Easter Eggs here save Gotham itself and this is Clayface’s story. One that is gooey, gory and satisfying throughout.
Clayface opens in theaters on October 23rd.
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VIDEO REVIEW