Clayface (2026) Movie Review: Better Than The Animated Series?
Clayface Review
FINALLY!
A live adaptation of Feat of Clay, which was adapted from Fish of Clay. Of the two aforementioned, one of them is a true story, and we’ll let you figure out which one that is.
What is true is that we love a good human experiment tale. But did we love Clayface?
WARNING! ENTERING SPOILER-INFESTED WATERS!
(We’ll let you know when it’s safe to swim back to the surface.)
We’re not going to dive into every minute detail, so here’s the synopsis.
After award-nominated actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) gets his face sliced off for making pizzas with mob boss Roland Daggett’s (David Dencik) girlfriend (Joana Ribeiro), he decides to reattach his face using the conventional method: injecting a bunch of experimental bloop into his face instead of using superglue like the rest of us would. After these microscopic nanites inhabit Matt’s cellular structure, he undertakes a murderous revenge plot against those who betrayed him.
BLOOP!
THE GOOD
- Gotham City
- Performances
- Body horror
- The overall idea of the bio-nanites
Swimming in the Middle
- Cinematography
- Dialogue
- The actual use of the bio-nanites on screen
- Overall editing
Cons
- Bio-nanites transformation editing — yes, bio-nanites are on all three tiers here
- The third act dance floor scene. Terrible. BLOOP!
CLAYFACE ENDING EXPLAINED:
Matt, the human test subject (aka Clayface himself), develops Stockholm syndrome as he falls in love with the human tester, Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie). Of course, she already has a fish mate, and you simply cannot commit adultery with your test subject.
Let’s skip the blubber. Dr. Corr electrocutes Matt, and she presses the kill switch on his bio-nanite matrix. All of Matt’s bloop liquefies into gloop, then cascades into the sewers, leaving Corr to live happily ever after. No Batman needed at all.
Until…
Matt is a news headline again after being missing for eight soggy months. Corr walks the streets of Gotham, unsure if anyone she brushes shoulders with might just be her little test subject. Of course, she hands money to an uknown man and it seems as if she knows it’s her pet project.
We follow “unknown man” back into his sewer lair, and for a moment we believe she followed him too.
Come on, we knew it wasn’t really her. And we knew “unknown man” was Matt.
Matt’s gone mad, and fully transforms into Clayfish. BLOOP! Sorry. Clayface.
This begs the question: why did Matt bump into her and ask her for money? Did he want to see if she could tell it was he, the human test subject she’d abandoned into the depths of sewage? Did he just want to see her so he could sink back into his pit of sorrow and create his own fictional narrative?
Let’s Clayface it: he could be anyone at any time. If he really wants to be with her, he could morph into someone she may find desirable, and over time, maybe confess it was himself the whole time. Perhaps the bio-nanite bloop has fully taken over now, and they in turn don’t know what they’re doing.
But what do we know? We’re just fish.
SPOILER FREE ZONE: SWIM BACK
Fish of Clay remains unmatched. It’s fair to say we didn’t love the film, but despite its flaws, we enjoyed this human experiment enough to give it a fins up.
FISHY FUN FACT:
Did you know? Before James Gunn and Peter Safran even took over DC Studios, The Batman director Matt Reeves was already secretly developing this Clayface origin story with Mike Flanagan. Once Gunn saw the script, he loved the dark tone so much he immediately greenlit it as the very first horror movie in the new DCU.
Article by Clayfish
