5 Best Movies To Watch After DC's Clayface

This post contains spoilers for "Clayface"

This week, DC's villain streak continues with "Clayface," the new movie directed by James Watkins and written by Mike Flanagan, bringing one of Batman's classic villains to life in his own incredibly icky origin story. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a movie-star-in-the-making whose career is obliterated after he's left mutilated by a jaded gangster. Desperate to get his life and his looks back, he turns to questionable science practiced by Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who reconstructs Hagen's face with new nanocell technology. Unfortunately, as is common when messing with things we don't fully understand, the highly advanced prosthetics begin to take a toll on Matt. He becomes dependent on the procedure, and it also grants him terrifying new abilities that let him take revenge on those who wronged him. In doing so, Matt's humanity sinks beneath the surface until only a monster remains.

After the not-so-heroic effort that was "Supergirl" earlier this year and the glowing success of HBO's "Lanterns," "Clayface" might be the refreshing big-screen hit James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Studios needs. It's a gory, skin-crawling and stretching horror movie that evokes the vibe of some absolute classics. With that in mind, we've put together five films that capture what makes "Clayface" so entertaining. These tales also center on obsession, revenge, and the loss of humanity through horrific means that make you wonder if this poor soul might've gotten off lucky. So after watching Matt Hagen's rise and fall and the vengeful, vain path he takes, why not check out these five scary, equally sticky movies when you're done?

Another star in his own right, Eric Draven is a rock musician whose life comes to an abrupt end after his fiancée, Shelly, is raped and murdered, and he gets thrown from a window to his death by a local gang. Resurrected by a crow, Eric returns from the dead, blessed with incredible powers and a hunger to deliver his own version of justice on those who wronged him.

Directed by Alex Proyas, "The Crow" is a pristine '90s product of its time, featuring a terrific, tragically final performance by Lee as a heartbroken hero. Before Neo made it a big deal, Lee is charismatic and downright cool in leather and a trench coat as the ghost of vengeance. Like Hagen, Draven is also pushed to horrific lengths to exact his revenge, and in doing so, becomes a boogeyman feared by criminals he's not afraid to kill. At the same time, there's also the one good cop in a bad town (in "The Crow," it's Ernie Hudson as Sergeant Albrecht) trying to enforce fair justice in an unjust world.

After gaining a cult following, the film spawned three sequels that followed different wronged heroes who returned from the grave, but neither they nor the 2024 remake starring Bill Skarsgard could replicate that energy. It's even more tragic that "The Crow" would house Brandon Lee's greatest performance, and his last one, after he died during filming, leaving behind a legacy of a ghostly hero Hollywood still can't crack.

When you see the horrific, shape-shifting, body-doubling monstrosities Matt Hagen turns into, it's hard not to think of John Carpenter's classic remake and all-around science fiction masterpiece, "The Thing." Both movies focus on identity, but while Matt Hagen fights a losing battle to hold onto his own, the 1982 movie shows an enemy threat stealing the ones belonging to the occupants of Outpost 31.

Like "Clayface," Carpenter's sci-fi horror features still-tremendously graphic close encounters with an alien that can imitate anyone it touches. Faces split, bleed, and bare teeth in all the wrong places as Kurt Russell's MacReady loses trust in everyone around him, leaving us with one of cinema's most beloved, ambiguous endings.

There's no question that "Clayface" pulls from "The Thing" to some degree, with Hagen sometimes absorbing and outright consuming unfortunate souls in his horrifying quest for vengeance. One sequence even shows Hagen engorging a target through his own chest, much like the infamous defibrillator scene in the Carpenter movie. But even though both movies have a crack at body horror, "The Thing" has that little something extra up its ever-changing sleeve: constant paranoia that plagues the film, infecting its characters and, by extension, us with doubt about who is who.

Tearaway scientists who don't think things through are why science fiction thrives a lot of the time. In "Clayface," it's Ackie's determined doctor who thinks she can change the world with her new creation, but instead creates a monster in Matt. Tweak a few specific pieces, even trap an essential plot point, and you might hear the familiar buzzing of David Cronenberg's "The Fly" in the background, which Flanagan and Watkins should be pleased about.

First, the romance that dare not speak its name blooms between Matt and Caitlyn, making this tale all the more tragic. It's not unlike Jeff Goldblum's Dr. Seth Brundle and Geena Davis' determined journalist, Veronica Quaife, who learns that this mysterious stranger has created a device that can teleport a passenger from one place to the other in an instant. Like "Clayface," though, the experiment to push science into the future fails to learn from the past, with Hagen undergoing a monstrous transformation like Brundle and both becoming lesser versions of themselves.

Additionally, there are also extra elements of "The Fly" that the new DC horror skims over and shouldn't. When the skin begins to sag and the side effects present themselves, Hagen's need for Caitlyn's medication is almost drug-like, bordering on obsession. It's much like how Brundle's telepods become his gateway into what he believes could be the next upgrade in human biology. It isn't, of course, and Brundle breaks through barriers as Hagen does, turning to the women they love to make the tough call. The difference is the most recent one survives the tragedy because, well...comic books.

Fame and face-changing to fend off our fragile existence isn't just at the core of "Clayface"; it's also the main focus of Coralie Fargeat's 2024 horror, "The Substance." Demi Moore delivers an Oscar-nominated performance as fading star Elisabeth, who, after taking black-market medical drugs to fend off the competition, creates one of her own in the form of Sue (Margaret Qualley). What follows is a glitzy Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-like tale as the two try to cling to their own versions of fame, only to meet gruesome ends. The result is their finally taking the stage together in a hideous form, with a closing scene not too dissimilar from our final moments with Matt.

"The Substance" remains a standout body-horror hit, with Moore delivering a performance that earned all the praise it got, alongside Qualley. A special shout-out must also be given to Dennis Quaid as a cliché but compelling television network executive, coincidentally named Harvey (ooft). The real star of the show, however, is its body horror, just like "Clayface." There's even an argument to be made that the special effects makeup not only rivals but still surpasses the work from the DCU. Putting Elisabeth and Sue in the spotlight demands a lot of detail to bring this movie star-turned-monster to life, and the repulsive creature designs still hold up. If and when Clayface returns, "The Substance" director Coralie Fargeat could be a great next pick to mold a new chapter for Hagen.

If you prefer your lead character testing the limits of his own skin to be a good guy, consider Sam Raimi's underrated comic-book-movie-esque entry, "Darkman," which made a hero of Liam Neeson before he was off rescuing his missing daughter or scowling into the camera on a regular basis. Released in 1990, the film cast him as scientist Peyton Westlake, who suffers a near-death experience at the hands of a mob boss, leaving him horrifically disfigured. Like Hagen, Westlake undergoes similar treatment and applies self-made synthetic skin, with newly gained superhuman strength and resilience helping too. Unfortunately, the side effects turn him into a juggernaut of vengeance with borderline psychotic tendencies, leading him to fight not only those who thought him dead but also his own humanity, which is slowly slipping away on his new mission as Darkman.

With impressive makeup for its time and Raimi's classic helter-skelter camera work, "Darkman" is a crimefighter with a cult following that deserves much more love. Besides Neeson as the hero, it also features his love interest, played by future Oscar winner Frances McDormand, and Larry Drake as the unhinged gangster Robert G. Durant. It might not be nearly as gross as "Clayface" in putting its leading man through the movie magic mincer, but it still has some squeamish moments as Neeson suffers for science and revenge. Give it a watch and ask yourself why, in a world with a handful of Superman, Spider-Man, and Batman movies, Darkman hasn't seen the light of day again in a reboot.