Matt Hagen isn’t having a good time in Clayface. Following a brief look at the grotesque body transformation to come, DC Studios has released a new trailer for its forthcoming horror adventure, marking a shift away from the traditional superhero/antihero mould.

In it, the titular character, played by Tom Rhys Harries, is left with career-ending injuries following an unfortunate encounter with a mob, prompting him to seek out an experimental scientist (Naomi Ackie), who injects him with a drug. While initially promising, the side effects don’t take long to surface — his face starts melting off, and in the middle of a flight, he heads into the washroom and attempts to cut it off with a pair of nail scissors (ouch). The clip then shows his eventual transformation into the shape-shifting villain of the Batman universe.

“Matt Hagen’s meteoric rise from Gotham street kid to Hollywood leading man is tragically cut short when a local crime boss’ actions leave him horribly disfigured. Abandoned by his team and with nothing left, Matt seeks out a cutting-edge treatment that miraculously returns him to his former self … but also unexpectedly affects his grip on reality, spiralling him down a destructive path of all-consuming revenge,” reads the official logline.

If that sounds similar to a Mike Flanagan project, it’s because Clayface has the horror auteur behind Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill House on scriptwriting duty. James Watkins (Speak No Evil) is directing, with studio co-heads Peter Safran and James Gunn serving as producers alongside Matt Reeves (The Batman) and Lynn Harris (Se7en, The Notebook). Like 2019’s Joker, the movie is touted as an origin story for a Batman supervillain and will carry an R rating.

Joining Harries and Ackie on the roll call are David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll, Joshua James, and more. The film is set between Matt Reeves’ The Batman and its 2028 sequel, starring Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader, and within the same universe as the HBO Max series, The Penguin. It also marks the character’s official debut in the new DC Universe, with his comic counterpart introduced as a moderately successful actor who adopted the identity of a character he’d portrayed in a horror pic after turning to crime.

Clayface is slated for theatrical release on 23 October.