Clayface (2026)
Directed by: James Watkins
Premise: Based on the DC Comics character. A handsome actor (Tom Rhys Harries) is disfigured when he crosses a Gotham City gangster. An experimental treatment restores his looks but gives him the ability to shapeshift.
What Works: Clayface is fundamentally a body horror film. Like The Fly and The Substance, the emotional appeal of Clayface is rooted in our anxieties about the fragility and unglamorousness of our bodies. The film has a few sequences and visuals that effectively exploit this fear.
What Doesn’t: Clayface is a sloppy production. The film is intended to be a story of corruption. The actor’s restored handsomeness belies a simmering instability as he becomes increasingly violent. The corruption plot is bungled. The story feels as though scenes are missing and the character’s moral transformation is sudden and makes no sense. There are hints that there was supposed to be more to this, that the actor was a monster from the beginning, but the filmmakers don’t commit to it. That lack of commitment sinks the movie. Clayface was clearly intended to be a dark horror picture but it feels as though the filmmakers resist the horror or anything else that might be complex or upsetting. The movie is dramatically flat. The love triangle has little romantic tension. The action set pieces are few and they are limp. Clayface is extremely boring. A lot of the movie consists of dialogue exchanges with the characters having the same conversation over and over again. There is no end to the carelessness of the storytelling. Plot devices are slotted in at the last minute and the title character not only transforms his body but changes his clothes from one shot to the next. The visual effects of Clayface are inconsistent. Some of the images are organic and gooey but other effects look like CGI from the late 1990s. The sound is notably bad. It’s often hollow and tinny. This is especially evident in the nightclub scenes that lack any bass. It makes the scene sound like a stage instead of a real place.
Bottom Line: Clayface is a disaster. It’s a sloppy and careless mess of a film that is comparable to Morbius and Madame Web.
Episode: #1122 (October 25, 2026)