Clayface Debuts Fresh at 77% — Critics Love the Gore, Fight Over the Rest

Clayface’s reviews are in: DC’s body-horror gamble debuts Fresh at 77% — and the critics are split down the middle.

The embargo lifts, the lights come up, and nobody around you agrees about what you just watched. Half the row is grinning through the goop. The other half is still arguing about the script in the lobby. Your popcorn’s gone cold — and honestly, fiends, so has Matt Hagen’s face.

Phones down, lights low. Here’s the verdict — because today, the verdict is the news.

The full review embargo on Clayface lifted this morning, Wednesday, October 21, and the film debuted Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes at 77% from its first 44 counted reviews — the second-best-reviewed film in the new DC Universe, behind only Superman at 83% and well clear of Supergirl at 57%. The audience score stays empty until previews start Thursday night, October 22, ahead of the Friday, October 23 opening.

Watch the Trailer

Quick Specs

Film: Clayface (2026)
Director: James Watkins
Screenplay: Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini (story by Mike Flanagan)
Cast: Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan
Studio: DC Studios / Warner Bros. Pictures
Rating: R — strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use
Runtime: 108 minutes
Rotten Tomatoes: 77% Fresh (44 reviews at first count)
Release: In theaters Friday, October 23, 2026 — previews Thursday, October 22

The Fresh Side Is Loud

Jonathan Sim scored it 9 out of 10 and called it “one of DC’s best movies to date.” Robbie Collin gave it 4 out of 5: “It cannot be overstated how much fun it is to soak up a film like this.” Liz Shannon Miller went furthest of all, calling it “the scariest, freakiest movie ever made based on a DC Comics property.” And Johnny Oleksinski kept it blessedly simple: “It’s gross. In a fun way!”

Everybody Agrees on Harries — and the Goop

Even the pans single out the man in the middle. Clarisse Loughrey wrote that Tom Rhys Harries “works each scene with such wounded intensity that you could layer on a dozen more prosthetics and the performance would still leap out.” The gore lands, too: the airplane scene — Matt cutting open his own sealed eyelids mid-flight — keeps surfacing in review after review as the moment that proves the R rating wasn’t just marketing.

The Rotten Side Swings Back

David Fear called the film “the equivalent of eating a handful of Play-Doh, and twice as flavorless.” Brian Truitt gave it 2 out of 4, faulting “a severe lack of character development,” and Molly Freeman summed up the whole split in one line: it “offers more gross body horror than compelling character study.” Josh Wilding’s 2.5-out-of-5 review — the one that called Clayface “DC’s Morbius moment” — is back in the count, too. It vanished from Rotten Tomatoes on Tuesday after Wilding posted it out of a public screening he’d bought a ticket to, then returned the moment the embargo lifted.

Full Disclosure, Up Front

Full disclosure, up front, because that’s how we do things here: Harper hasn’t seen Clayface yet — nobody on this desk has. Everything above is the critics’ fight, not our verdict; ours lands after opening weekend. Until then, the honest summary is this: the horror delivers, the lead delivers, and the script is where the bodies are buried.

Trivia & Facts

Clayface is the third film in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe — and the first one built as an out-and-out horror movie.
The 77% debut slots it second in the DCU pecking order: Superman sits at 83%, Supergirl at 57%.
Reported budget figures swung between $30 million and $40 million in the final week before release, and opening-weekend forecasts run from about $20 million to $33 million depending on who’s counting.
Mike Flanagan’s story draws on “Feat of Clay,” the Batman: The Animated Series two-parter — the same inspiration he’s cited since his first pitch.

Harper’s Extras

Our Clayface tracker — every update, reaction and trailer for the melt, in one place.
Clayface tickets are on sale now — our breakdown of the October 23 opening.
Body-horror homework before Friday: The Fly and The Substance are the two comparisons the critics keep reaching for.
The Horror News desk — every verdict that drops this week, as it drops.