Clayface: A Villain Origin Story Done Right... But To What End?

You know when you go to the theater and you see the latest small budget horror movie and you think, "hey, that was money well spent! I had a good time." Well, if you remove the D.C. Logo at the beginning of the film and never call the city he is in Gotham, then that's basically what we have here. Although calling it horror is a reach.

Clayface is body horror that wants to exist in the vein of The Fly, but it fails to frighten so much as gross out with blood, flayed skin and in one case wisdom teeth. Clayface is more of a gross drama than horror.

Tom Rhys Harries, 36 plays Matt Hagen, a movie star riding high on an Oscar nomination, who makes a very bad decision by sleeping with the wrong girl. Harries is great as Hagen and this could be a breakout performance for the actor who despite being in the business for 15 years hasn't been able to really lift himself to leading man status. He sort of reminds me of Cillian Murphy, who had his own turn as a DC villain once upon a time.

Clayface is likely going to make back it's money for DC, but the real question has to be why make it? Superman 2025 was solid, Supergirl was not great, Lanterns made arguably more fans angry than happy and Clayface is a one off villian whose tone fits more in Matt Reeves The Batman universe than James Gunn's DCU. So why?

There is almost nothing Gunn can do to make this character connect with the bigger DCU proper including the upcoming Man of Tomorrow, so why waste resources and fan patience by making your third movie out Clayface? It seems to be just another in a long line of bad decisions for the DCU and the eventual Endgame of the Justice League. Yes that pun was intended because DC is so far behind marvel and will continue to fall even further behind following Doomsday, which may break more box office records than Sony/Marvel's other movie this year... Spiderman: Brand New Day.

The positive thing you can say about Clayface is even if the supporting cast of character was pretty weak, Clayface wasn't. If Gunn wants to build DC characters like this one at a time building into a Dark Justice League, then we are here for it. That said, will the new powers of Skydance be patient enough to let that happen... highly unlikely.

As a stand alone film, I give the 1 hour and 48 minute Clayface a solid B, but as a DC Studios entry, I give it a What The Hell are You Guys Thinking? If you have the money to see more than 10 movies in the theater this year, then I suggest you see Clayface in theaters. Here is where it ranked in my overall 2026 movie list:

STORY SYNOPSIS & SPOILERS AHEAD

Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) is a Gotham-born actor at the peak of his career. The film opens with him shooting a movie, doing talk shows, and landing an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. To celebrate, he hits a Gotham club with his best friend and fellow actor, Corey. There he hooks up with Theresa Lopes, who happens to be the girlfriend of mob boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik).

The next morning, Szabo and his men find Hagen in bed with Theresa, and Szabo takes a razor to his face, cutting him up so badly he's barely recognizable. Then the legal and PR machine finishes the job: when Hagen sues, Szabo's lawyers bury him, his own manager (Eddie Marsan) gets power of attorney and drains him, and Corey leaks damaging details during the civil case. Hagen ends up broke, disgraced, and alone. Multiple reconstructive surgeries only make the scarring look worse.

Desperate, Hagen volunteers as the first human test subject for Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), whose experimental therapy uses AI-driven nanoparticles that continuously repair damaged tissue. It works instantly with his face is fully restored, and he starts stepping back into public life. But the effect doesn't hold: at the premiere of the play he was supposed to star in, his face starts drooping and melting in public. He rushes back to Corr, and in a panic injects himself with a massive overdose of the nanoparticles. That's what breaks him. His skin starts caving in and reshaping itself, and he discovers he can morph his face into other people's, at first involuntarily, triggered by his emotions.

Hagen's first kill is his money manager, but it's an accident. After that, it becomes deliberate. He murders Corey for betraying him in the trial, in a scene modeled directly on the Michael/Fredo kiss in The Godfather Part II ("You broke my heart"). Then he returns to the same club where it all started, now fully in control of his shapeshifting, works his way to Szabo, and kills him and Theresa too. He also murders Caitlyn's fiancé, a Gotham detective, because Hagen has developed obsessive feelings for Corr and wants the man out of the picture.

After the killings, Hagen undergoes his final transformation into the classic monstrous Clayface, huge, hulking, barely human, and begs Caitlyn to end it. She does, and his body collapses into a paste-like mass that oozes down into the Gotham sewers. The last scene reveals he survived: living in the sewers, using his powers to act out both sides of a conversation between himself and Caitlyn, still fixated on her.

Notably, there's no Batman and no other DC characters at all. It's a completely standalone Gotham crime-horror story, just laying down the city's corrupt, mob-run groundwork for the DCU.