Clayface trailer: DC Studios sculpts a body-horror villain for Halloween
If the embed above has gone walkabout, you can watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOyhlkIMh3A
Every actor in Hollywood will tell you the same thing. It’s not the lines, it’s not the fame, it’s not even the catering. It’s the face. Lose the face and you lose the career, which is why DC Studios’ Clayface is, at heart, the most terrifying film about the entertainment industry since someone first uttered the words “we’ll fix it in post”. A new trailer has now oozed its way online, and the film lands in UK and Irish cinemas on 23rd October 2026, just in time to put you off moisturiser for the rest of the year.
Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a Gotham street kid who has clawed his way up to Hollywood leading man. Sadly, Gotham being Gotham, a local crime boss takes exception to something and leaves Hagen horribly disfigured. His team does what Hollywood teams traditionally do at such moments, which is to stop returning his calls. With nothing left, Hagen signs up for a cutting-edge treatment that miraculously restores his looks. The small print, as ever, is where the trouble lives. The cure also loosens his grip on reality, and before long he’s heading down a path of all-consuming revenge while his own body develops the structural integrity of a Play-Doh set left out in the rain.
Comics readers will know there have been more Clayfaces over the years than there have been Batman reboots, which takes some doing. The original, Basil Karlo, was a failed actor with a grudge back in 1940, while Matt Hagen arrived in 1961 as a treasure hunter who took an unwise dip in a pool of protoplasm. This version borrows the actor angle and the chemical-cosmetics disaster that Batman: The Animated Series gave Hagen in its classic episode “Feat of Clay”, which remains the gold standard for villains who turn into puddles. Nobody at DC appears to have noticed that the lesson of every Clayface origin is “never trust a miracle skincare product”, and we salute their commitment to the bit.
What makes this one worth sitting up for is the people behind the camera. Director James Watkins made Eden Lake and The Woman in Black, so he knows his way around dread, and the screenplay comes from Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, with the story by Flanagan. Given Flanagan’s track record with The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, expect long monologues delivered in the dark, grief you can cut with a knife, and at least one moment where you realise the thing in the background has been standing there for the whole scene. This is being pitched squarely as a horror thriller rather than a cape-and-punch-up affair, which is either a bold swerve for a superhero studio or an honest admission that Gotham has always been a horror setting with better tailoring.
The supporting cast is equally tasty. Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan all feature, alongside Nancy Carroll and Joshua James. Eddie Marsan in particular has made a career of playing men you would cross the street to avoid, so the smart money says he isn’t the one handing out free facials. Matt Reeves, whose own Gotham is currently wringing out its trench coat between Batman instalments, produces alongside Lynn Harris, James Gunn and Peter Safran.
The craft line-up reads like someone went shopping for awards. Rob Hardy, who shot Ex Machina and Annihilation, is director of photography, with James Price on production design, Jon Harris editing and Keith Madden on costumes. The score is by Volker Bertelmann, who scored All Quiet on the Western Front, so bring tissues and possibly earplugs. The film comes to you as a 6th & Idaho production, and Warner Bros. is keeping it cinemas-only in the UK and Ireland, which means you’ll have to watch a man’s face slide off his skull on a screen the size of a house rather than safely on your phone.
Will it work? Superhero fatigue is real, but horror audiences have never once tired of watching a vain man pay for his vanity, and a mid-budget body-horror revenge story with Flanagan’s fingerprints on it is a far more interesting proposition than yet another sky-beam finale. Clayface is in cinemas across the UK and Ireland from 23rd October 2026. Moulding your expectations accordingly is optional.
