‘Clayface’ Final Trailer Has Me Cautiously Optimistic About DC’s R-Rated Body Horror

The new Clayface trailer is here, with the movie arriving in theaters October 23, and I’ve gone from incredibly excited to cautiously optimistic.

I still love the concept. An R-rated DC movie that takes a supervillain’s origin story and turns it into grotesque body horror? That’s exactly the kind of swing I want to see these studios take.

But I expected this final trailer to give us a little more. Instead, it feels like a lot of the same footage, just cut together differently.

There are flashes of something really nasty, especially in those final frames. I want this thing to go full David Cronenberg. Give me the tragic transformation, the disgusting practical effects, the feeling of watching somebody lose control of his own body. There’s so much potential here.

We do know they’re deliberately holding something back. As Entertainment Weekly previously reported, Clayface’s final form is being kept out of the official marketing. That could mean the best material is waiting for us in theaters.

I hope that’s exactly what’s happening.

But when the trailers keep returning to the same handful of moments, I start worrying about how many more the movie has. That isn’t a judgment on a film I haven’t seen. It’s just where the marketing has left me: still interested, still rooting for it, but a little less confident than I was after that first look.

Tom Rhys Harries (White Lines) stars as Matt Hagen, an actor whose career is derailed when a crime boss leaves him disfigured. An experimental treatment restores his appearance but sends him toward a horrifying transformation and a destructive pursuit of revenge.