The official Clayface trailer is out now, and the upcoming DCU body horror movie looks like it has captured the perfect tone for the film.

DC Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures’ Clayface will be released in United States theaters later this year. Co-written by Mike Flanagan, the film is directed by James Watkins and will see Tom Rhys Harries play the titular Batman villain.

The synopsis reads, “Clayface unravels one man’s horrifying descent from rising Hollywood star to revenge-filled monster in a story that explores the loss of one’s identity and humanity, corrosive love, and the dark underbelly of scientific ambition.”

Review of the Clayface Trailer

The Clayface trailer, despite being just a teaser as of now, gives a strong impression of everything I could have hoped for with the upcoming movie. The film opens with a brutal look at Matt Hagen (played by Tom Rhys Harris) in a hospital with a disfigured face. The teaser also hints that we’ll see Hagen spiraling further into madness, due to both his disfigured face and the result of a science experiment gone wrong.

Although Clayface is often seen as a strict villain to Batman, he has always been one of the more tragic characters in all of Batman’s lore. Specifically, the iconic two-part episode of Batman: The Animated Series, titled “Feat of Clay,” portrays Hagen as an almost sympathetic figure, who is forced into gang life and subsequently sees his life spiral as he becomes addicted to a face cream that helps repair his face.

Judging by the brief snippets of the trailer, it seems we’ll be getting a lot of that aspect of the character in the movie. Although Clayface is ultimately a villain, a movie dedicated to him should strike a balance between horror and tragedy, especially if we’re going to be in Hagen’s POV throughout the entire film. With just a few glimpses of footage from the trailer, it appears that DC Studios has captured that tone effectively, although we’ll have to wait to see more from the movie before fully knowing.