The Pitch
A body-horror reboot of the Batman villain, directed by James Watkins from a Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini script. Tom Rhys Harries plays a rising actor whose face gets wrecked by a Gotham gangster. Out of options, he lets a shady fringe scientist (Naomi Ackie, in a role that leans Elizabeth Holmes) run an experiment on him. It works, briefly. David Dencik, Max Minghella, and Eddie Marsan fill out the ensemble. No Batman, no cowl, no Gotham cameos propping it up. R-rated, gory, a straight-up genre picture wearing a DC name tag.
The Argument For
Harries is the whole engine. He plays the vanity, the panic, and the physical fallout like three different performances stacked on one actor, and the gross-out stuff lands harder because he's committed. Watkins knows how to shoot squirming flesh. He made "Eden Lake" and "Speak No Evil," and he brings the same mean streak here. Flanagan's fingerprints are on the script's grief and self-loathing throughlines, which keep it from being pure splatter. Practical effects do real work. When the body gives, it gives wetly, and the camera doesn't flinch. For 90-odd minutes of a disfigured man eating pills from a quack, you could do worse.
The Case Against
It's shaped like a smarter movie than it ends up being. The Elizabeth Holmes satire sits there without really biting. The Gotham underworld stuff is thin, mostly a vibe. The pacing dips hard in the middle act, where the film wants to be character study and body horror at once and doesn't fully commit to either. Critics have landed between 3.5/5 and "disappointingly tame." Comicbookmovie called it DC's Morbius moment, which is harsh but not crazy. If you're expecting a Cronenberg-level thesis on identity, you'll be annoyed.
Who This Is Actually For
People who liked "Titane" but wished it were dumber. People who rewatch "The Substance" for the gloop. Horror fans who want practical effects and don't need a cinematic universe tie-in to care. If you quit "Joker" twenty minutes in because the Serious Cinema cosplay bugged you, this one is lower-calorie and shorter. If you came expecting a Batman villain origin with Easter eggs and setup for the next movie, you'll be checking your phone by the second act.
Final Word
BACKGROUND TV because the ambition is there and the execution isn't. Watkins can direct a mean sequence. Harries is giving a real performance. The script keeps setting up ideas it doesn't finish, pulling the movie back toward genre beats whenever it threatens to say something. The Holmes-coded scientist angle could've been pointed; instead it's set dressing. Nothing here is lecturing. If anything the opposite problem — a movie that gestures at themes about vanity, exploitation, and the industries that chew up pretty people, then shrugs and reaches for another prosthetic. Watch it with a drink, let the gore wash over you, don't expect it to stick.