Amid a slew of Super-related movies in DC Studios’ slate, with both Supergirl and Man of Tomorrow following on from last year’s Superman, we have one of the more atypical projects from a comic book movie. That is Clayface, the body horror film which will serve as an origin story for one of Batman’s many monster villains. With a script by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini (Drive) and direction from James Watkins (Eden Lake), the movie has a pretty good pedigree. Footage from it also did pretty well at the recent CinemaCon 2026. Now, with the teaser trailer, we can finally see just how scary this comic book horror really is.
The teaser is much more of a mood piece than a story trailer. And what a mood that is! Using a haunting, nigh-acapella version of the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” we spend much of the teaser looking at the badly scarred and bloodied face of Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) as it cuts to various clips of what we can assume happened before and after this. What gave him the Mouthwashing look?
Well, we know from the basic premise that Hagen was a dashing heartthrob actor whose face became horribly disfigured following a brutal attack. Believing his career (and life) are over, Hagen agrees to take part in an experimental drug trial which makes his flesh ultra malleable. He can look like a star again. However, as we see, the stability of his new, some might say, “clay face” is tenuous and he begins to sag and drip.
This is right out of the superb two-part Batman: The Animated Series episode, “Feat of Clay.” I’d wondered how much of Clayface’s monstrous form we’d get. While we don’t see him hulking, we do have a couple of shots of Matt casting a shadow onto a building where he forms his arm into a giant mace. Again, this is straight out of BTAS. I’m thrilled we’re getting a horror movie within the DCU. Gotham City is home to dozens of the scariest villains in comics. Why no give all (or most of them) their own horror origin movie? Mister Freeze, Man-Bat, hell, even Poison Ivy.
Now, what we don’t and won’t know for a while is whether the Caped Crusader appears at all in Clayface. Maybe Commissioner Gordon or other prominent GCPD people, or some other of Batman’s rogues. The mind reels.
Clayface will hit theaters October 23. Dang it, six whole months!
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
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