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The first reactions to Clayface are in, and critics who have seen DC Studios’ body horror film are calling it brutal, gory and a breakout for Tom Rhys Harries. The reactions started posting on social media Wednesday after early screenings, ahead of the film’s October 23, 2026 theatrical release, and the gore and Harries’ performance are drawing most of the praise.
James Watkins (Speak No Evil) directs from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, based on a story by Flanagan. Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose face is disfigured and who turns to an experimental treatment that restores his looks but leaves him unstable. The studio has kept the creature’s full form out of every trailer, including the final trailer from September, so these reactions are the first word on what the finished film delivers.
Critics Say the Gore Lives Up to the R Rating
Collider’s Steven Weintraub called Clayface fantastic and said it works without any knowledge of DC. “It’s a hard R and loaded with brutal scenes that really surprised me,” he wrote, adding that his audience reacted out loud more than once during the screening.
Peter Gray of The AU Review described it as “dark, violent, with little levity to offset the nastiness,” while ComicBook.com’s Chris Killian said it “molds Matt Hagen’s tragic backstory into a wildly gory spectacle.” Killian added that under the gore, it plays as a throwback to classic gothic romance.
Tom Rhys Harries Gets Most of the Praise
Nearly every reaction comes back to the lead. Presenter Brandon Davis called the film freakishly awesome and praised Watkins’ unsettling version of Gotham, then went further on its star: “Tom Rhys Harries is a star, literally in the movie and for his performance.”
Multiverse of Color’s Breeze Riley wrote that “this should be a huge breakout for Tom Rhys Harries,” and called Naomi Ackie, who plays Dr. Caitlin Corr, a star as usual. Journalist Chalice Williams went as far as calling Clayface “one of the best horrors of the year,” and said she did not expect it to blend horror and romance as well as it does.
Critics Compare It to The Fly and Darkman
Critic Bill Bria called it a “body horror/mad science/antihero monster movie à la THE FLY and DARKMAN,” and said it works on its own before any shared-universe business. He was not the only one to reach for those two films. The comparison fits a movie whose director has named Sam Raimi’s style of horror as an influence, since Darkman is Raimi’s own story of a disfigured man rebuilding his face.
Phase Hero host Jenna Anderson found more humor in it than the marketing suggests, calling the film “disgusting, inventive, and astonishingly funny and earnest.” She also said it fits into the DCU with ease and is best seen in a full theater.
Not Every Reaction Was a Rave
Shahbaz of The Movie Podcast praised the body horror and Harries’ performance as genuinely excellent, but felt the story and some of its creative choices make Clayface “an odd third entry for a DCU still finding its identity.” The film follows Superman and Supergirl as the third theatrical release in James Gunn’s DC Universe.
Clayface is the first film in Gunn’s DCU to carry an R rating, given for strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use. David Dencik, Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan co-star alongside Harries and Ackie, with Matt Reeves, Lynn Harris, Gunn and Peter Safran producing.