Clayface Got 76 Percent From Critics and an A- From Audiences. Here Is Where the Reviews Split.

Clayface has now been judged three ways, and the verdicts do not quite agree. Critics like it: 76 percent on Rotten Tomatoes across 149 reviews, Certified Fresh. Audiences like it a lot more: an A- CinemaScore and 94 percent from verified ticket buyers. And the box office likes it enough. The first R-rated film in James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Universe made $9.5 million on Friday, including $3.5 million from Thursday previews, and Deadline projects a $23 million to $25 million opening weekend and a No. 1 finish.

That is a better week than DC had in June. Here is where the reviews agree, where they split, and who should actually buy a ticket.

The scorecard

• Rotten Tomatoes: 76 percent across 149 reviews, with an average of 6.6 out of 10. Top critics are cooler, at 68 percent across 31.
• Metacritic: 59 across 44 reviews, which the site files under "mixed or average."
• CinemaScore: A-, the same grade as Superman (2025) and The Batman.
• Verified audiences: 94 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter, from more than 1,000 ticket buyers.

For context, Superman sits at 83 percent with critics and 90 with verified audiences. Supergirl sits at 52 and 72, and drew a B- CinemaScore when it opened in June. So Clayface lands between its two predecessors with critics and ahead of both with the people who paid. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus captures the middle: it "takes time to get going until it eventually morphs into an icky and satisfying revenge thriller."

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The one thing everyone agrees on: Tom Rhys Harries

Harries, a Welsh actor in his first major lead, plays Matt Hagen, a Gotham kid turned Oscar-nominated movie star whose face is carved up by a mobster. He signs up for an experimental treatment that rebuilds it, and then the treatment will not stop. The Hollywood Reporter's review roundup put it plainly: even the detractors say he is terrific.

The Independent says he works each scene "with such wounded intensity that you could layer on a dozen more prosthetics and the performance would still leap out." ComicBookMovie.com, which gave the film 2.5 out of 5, still put him in its headline: "Tom Rhys Harries Shines In DC's Uninspired Morbius Moment."

The other point of agreement is the airplane scene, which DC Studios released as a clip on October 9. Hagen's eyelids seal shut mid-flight, and he locks himself in the bathroom with a pair of nail scissors during turbulence. Variety calls it a "dynamite gross-out setpiece" that "will fuel nightmares well into the coming months."

The split: Cronenberg or Play-Doh?

Past Harries, the reviews scatter. At the top, The Hollywood Reporter calls it "one of the year's big surprises," with enough psychological depth to "bear comparisons to the works of such body horror maestros as David Cronenberg and Sam Raimi." Variety calls it "odd, oozy fun" and adds, "If we must have a DC Universe, it could use more movies like this one."

At the low end, Rolling Stone says watching it "is the equivalent of eating a handful of Play-Doh, and twice as flavorless," and signs off with "Suddenly, Supergirl doesn't look so bad now, does it?" USA Today calls it "a messy DC miss" whose screenplay, by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, "does almost nothing with him as a character."

In between sits the most common review, which IGN and TheWrap write in different words. IGN says it "takes the film a while to find its groove" before a nasty, fun final act. TheWrap calls it "an effective, though hardly brilliant, gross-out horror film." Both reach for the same ancestor. Variety files it with "cartoonish '90s horror outings like Darkman and Thinner," and TheWrap says Hagen's revenge schemes are "directly inspired by Sam Raimi's Darkman."

Critics cannot even agree on the goo

Variety praises the "grisly practical makeup effects" and "consistently inspired prosthetics work." IGN says the film "largely employs old school practical makeup effects." TheWrap says the real star is the glop, and "it's usually CGI, because of course it is." If you care how a monster gets made, this is one you will have to settle yourself.

Is Matt Hagen a victim or a monster?

The sharpest disagreement is about the hero. As his career collapses, Hagen is accused of mistreating women, which he denies. TheWrap argues the film never clears him and "offers evidence he was a monster all along" without dealing with it. Slant reads the same material as the point: the film "baits the audience into identifying with the visceral thrill of Matt's revenge," then shows how destructive he has become. Slant goes further: "As an oblique table-setter for a coming update of Batman, it's a stroke of brilliance."

Why audiences graded it higher

CinemaScore polls opening-night audiences on their way out, and horror rarely grades well there. James Gunn, who runs DC Studios with Peter Safran, posted on Threads that only three horror movies had earned an A- "in the last couple years": Obsession, Weapons and Clayface.

The likeliest reason for the gap is expectations. Critics held it up against Cronenberg and found a familiar revenge plot. Ticket buyers came for a gross R-rated monster movie and got exactly that.

The box office: a win at this price

The $9.5 million Friday puts Clayface on course for $23 million to $25 million from 3,458 theaters, per Deadline's Friday night estimate. That puts it level with mid-October genre openings like Smile ($22.6 million) and Black Phone 2 ($27.2 million), and short of Supergirl's $37.1 million. The difference is cost: Supergirl was reported at $170 million to $186 million, and Deadline puts the net production cost of Clayface at $44 million before marketing.

It is not winning by much. A24's Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything made $5.8 million on Friday after expanding to 2,655 theaters and is headed for $19 million or more. LAIKA's Wildwood is third at around $11 million. Official estimates arrive Sunday, and next Saturday is Halloween.

Should you see it?

There is no homework, either: Gunn has said it takes place before Superman. Our Clayface preview has the comic book history if you want it.

Then rank it. Our DC movies ranked list has placed it in C tier for now, on reviews rather than a viewing, alongside Birds of Prey and Supergirl, with Superman up in A. Add Clayface on Shortlist, put it head to head against the other DC films two at a time, and see whether it beats Superman, sinks below Supergirl, or holds its own against the Gotham films on our Batman movies ranked list.

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