Clayface: a supervillain who sculpts himself

Film: Clayface
Director: James Watkins
Year: 2026
Running time: 108 minutes

DC’s new film Clayface tells the origin story of the character of the same name, who first appeared in the 1940s and has existed in many different versions. The screenplay is by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, two of the most important names in horror cinema today, and in the director’s chair is the man behind Speak No Evil, James Watkins. The project Flanagan pitched to DC is essentially inspired by “Feat of Clay”, the two-part story from Batman: The Animated Series, but it is really a film that brings together several different Clayface characters: a dark tale of bodily horror (body horror).

Following the “Clay Man” that an actor named Matt Hagen becomes after his face is shattered, the film runs in the same vein as Joker and The Batman, in which DC swims in darker waters. Because he is both an antihero and a vigilante, it is possible to think of Clayface alongside the Joker. The channel DC has opened takes a fresh look at these antiheroes, who in earlier examples were seen only as “Batman’s enemies” and were mostly drawn as caricatures, without psychological depth.

Both Joker and Clayface set out to go back to the roots of these characters’ evil, cruel and vengeful sides and, in doing so, to move beyond simple moral binaries. Reinterpreting stories long since absorbed into popular culture through today’s political and cultural atmosphere, and with a far more realistic aesthetic, these films aim to give these figures a class-based (and at times political) perspective. How far they manage this “update” is another debate, but it is fair to say that Clayface is much richer than Joker in psychological depth and character arc.

One reason for this is that Clayface opts for lesser-known actors rather than stars, and so builds its narrative around character and story rather than around a star. Another is that Clayface has a far smaller place in popular culture than the Joker, and carries no burden of past portrayals.

The film’s protagonist, Matt Hagen, is an actor from a poor family who has risen thanks to his talent and good looks. At a party after his Oscar nomination, Matt sleeps with the girlfriend of the city’s most powerful mob boss (Szabo). Szabo and his men tear his face to pieces and the whole industry, from his manager to his lawyer, turns its back on Hagen. Watkins moves quickly through this part, where Matt’s life goes downhill, because it is the classic opening of an origin story: a superhero or villain abandoned by everyone, his life turned upside down, and the slowly kindling fire of his revenge. Beginning under palm trees, lit by the fake sun of Hollywood and Los Angeles, this section soon gives way to the hazy, dirty, dark streets of Gotham. Penniless, Matt turns to Dr. Caitlyn Corr’s experimental drug as his way out. A treatment built on AI-assisted nanotechnology and a cellular regeneration system, it finally introduces us to Clayface.

• The technologies, mutations, radioactive substances, toxic barrels and experiments gone wrong that make superheroes and villains “super”... None of these produce evil directly on their own; they simply hold up a magnifying mirror, one that shows a giant, to human beings who exist only through their mortality, imperfection and fragility. Superheroes are mostly characters who cope better with the image they see in this mirror, who know that “with great power comes great responsibility”, who have not been abandoned by society or faced the violence of the other, and who are privileged in class terms. Supervillains, who experience social violence at its most naked, cling to the giant in the mirror and use it as a plaster over all the trauma and violence they have lived through.

Special powers are essentially like a test of one’s own dark side and of the desires and fears one has suppressed. Clayface puts Matt Hagen in exactly this kind of dilemma. At the start of the film Matt is introduced to us as a polite, innocent, “clean-faced” character. Perhaps even too innocent, too good. Having existed through his face, Matt, once he loses it, becomes someone who is not afraid of disappearing, of dying; so he accepts a dangerous treatment, and even overdoses to turn himself into Clayface.

As the story unfolds, the AI-powered cells try to repair Matt not only in body but in spirit too. Matt thus ends up with a strange body that no part of him, not even a drop of his blood, will ever leave. Just like his body, his soul begins to gather up its scattered pieces one by one, the fire of revenge flares up, and the origin story is complete.

• One of the important questions the film reflects on is the pieces of the soul. If the body is protected by blood and skin, what protects the soul, what keeps it standing without falling apart? Can the soul protect the body, and the body the soul?

In one scene Matt sees an image of Szabo, the man who shattered his face; his eyelids try to close over his eyes by growing new pieces of skin, and his face becomes deformed. When he calms down, it returns to its former state. The new “artificial” cells inside him act according to the purpose they were created for, trying to heal not only the body but the soul as well, especially when the soul’s pain becomes a threat to the body. At a certain point, chasing revenge, Matt slips into morally murkier territory. Rapidly beginning to change shape, Matt becomes able to imitate the face and body of anyone he chooses. We ask:

“Is this Matt? Or the cells inside him? Or the consciousness of the people whose place he takes?”

Is the drug (or poison) he has taken into his body a being with its own will and mind, like Venom? Or merely a tool that brings out the desires and fears Matt has suppressed? Here the film offers an interesting character transformation. The artificial cells, which until now acted only through the unconscious, surfacing in dreams and nightmares, entirely beyond Matt’s control, gradually begin to control him. Yet the questions remain unanswered:

“Is Matt the one in control, or the one being controlled? Is Matt surrendering to the unconscious, or choosing it?” Is all the cruelty suppressed by the good, innocent, clean-faced actor finding an excuse to break free? Are the cells merely a cover for Matt?

The film does not fully answer any of these questions. Especially in the second half of the film, we can no longer recognise the character we met at the start, and all these questions begin to line up, one after another, in our minds.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of the forerunners of superhero and supervillain stories, in fact reflects the hypocrisy of Jekyll, who creates a second self because he cannot face his own dark side. Unable to accept his dark desires and fears as his own, Dr. Jekyll acts on all these urges through Hyde, and so escapes responsibility. David Huckvale draws an observation about artificial intelligence from this mythic story. Artificial intelligence is not human, because it has no need of a Mr. Hyde. It is consciousness, with no unconscious. It is rational, with no urges. Clayface, transformed by AI, offers us a confusing and rich case on the divide between human and artificial, through the concepts of responsibility, will, identity and consciousness.

As the film goes on, it becomes ever harder to reach the truth of Clayface, who kneads his body like dough and carves and chisels it like a sculptor. In Matt’s own words, just like the artificial cells, he has now become “a perfect actor”. The more he becomes others, the more he carves them, the more he plays them, the more he turns, over time, into a nobody ; consciousness and the unconscious are now one and the same. In the end, who can say whether the real one is Jekyll or Hyde?

Similar works:

• Joker (2019, Todd Phillips)

• The Fly (1986, David Cronenberg)