Tom Rhys Harries in Clayface. Photograph: Warner Bros View image in fullscreen Tom Rhys Harries in Clayface. Photograph: Warner Bros Horror films Review Clayface review – flesh-stretching DC body horror is very gory but not very good Liverpool makes for an unconvincing Gotham City in this effectively gross but otherwise middling attempt to milk money from a lesser-known Batman villain
Benjamin Lee Wed 21 Oct 2026 21.00 CEST Last modified on Wed 21 Oct 2026 21.23 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google A sense of desperation is understandably in the air over at DC, the company, like Marvel, slowly realising that the mass superhero fever has finally broken. There’s still interest there, of course (this summer’s Spider-Man is now the biggest film of all time in the US after all), but it’s no longer good enough to leave a high-speed conveyor belt unmanned, purpose and quality control be damned. 2019 saw a staggering 10 superhero films released in cinemas, and the inevitable exhaustion that followed, also fueled by Covid, led to a gradual winding down, monster hits turning into minor ones and sure bets often becoming expensive flops.
Read more As Peter Parker winged his way to box office records this summer, DC’s Supergirl bombed so hard that experts believe it might have cost Warners upwards of $200m in losses. It was just the latest disappointment for the brand after Black Adam, Joker: Folie à Deux, Blue Beetle and The Flash all underperformed while even last year’s much-heralded Superman reboot only grossed a solid $618m, a far cry from the $1bn heyday of the genre (things got so bad that even a fully filmed Batgirl adventure was deleted for the tax break ). Notably, the last DC film to swoop past that magic figure was Joker in 2019, a darker, lower-budget attempt to spotlight a villain rather than a hero, a big swing with relatively low stakes. Todd Phillips’s film might be best known by some for being brave enough to ask the question, “What if Taxi Driver sucked?” but for all of its many issues, it brought buzz and prestige and, shockingly, Oscars, to an easily ridiculed universe. It was also, crucially, something rare in that world: a close-to-good idea.
The evolution of Clayface, another R-rated villain origin story with a markedly lower budget than the DC norm, was not in direct response to Joker (it is allegedly the first in a new “Gods and Monsters” strand) but its path is one that head James Gunn would clearly like to emulate, albeit financially rather than awards-wise. One of many thoughts I had during Clayface, other than what I should have for dinner and how long I might be able to make a small popcorn last, was just how striking Phillips’s film stands in comparison. It remains shallow and smug and cursed with a grating lead performance, but it was visually punchy and, like the very best comic book adaptations, genuinely transporting, rich on dank atmosphere and thoughtfully curated production design. It was an undeniable moment.
Clayface is overwhelmingly not a moment. Admittedly its targets are way lower (Mike Flanagan’s original script, allegedly more texturally complex, was entirely rewritten ) but even as a similarly new way in, as a relatively standalone horror movie for those who wouldn’t now rush toward a superhero caper, it’s a clumsily missed opportunity and another reminder that those at DC don’t seem to know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
Rather than feeling like a lower-budget DC movie (it was m…