Lisa Laman's Bite Sized Reviews: Clayface, Being Heumann, Wicker

Matt Hagen looking distraught in Clayface 

Howdy folks! Time once again for some bite-sized reviews of new theatrical releases that Lisa Laman has watched recently! This time, let's talk about three new autumn 2026 movies that go all over the map in terms of genre. First up, a gooey trip to Gotham...

Clayface

The saga of Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a handsome actor whose attempt to regain his sexy face ends up turning him into the Batman villain Clayface, underpins what’s conceptually a body horror film in Clayface. Unfortunately, this deeply competent but not necessarily chilling title’s biggest drawback is it lacks the chaos of other body horror films. Titles in this cinematic realm from Brian Yuzna, Julia Ducournau, or David Cronenberg are outright unhinged creations where anything is on the table. You never know what images, graphic deaths, or bizarre plot turns are just around the corner as seemingly “stable” human bodies are contorted.

Clayface, meanwhile, can’t get too wild lest it alienate opportunities to sell Funko Pop figures. Thus, the nastiest, nightmarish set pieces littering other body horror movies are AWOL. Remember that lady getting her bones contorted in the 2018 Suspiria remake? Or the unforgettable set piece Isabelle Adjani's Anna has a breakdown in a tunnel in Possession? Such bravura is largely absent here in a movie content delivering generic gangster baddies and roughly only 100 seconds total of Clayface’s gooey monster form from the comics/Batman: The Animated Series.

That grave flaw kept nagging at me in Clayface even while director James Watkins keeps the proceedings otherwise workmanlike. Rhys Harries and leading lady Naomi Ackie (the latter playing the scientist inadvertently responsible for Clayface’s creation) especially thrive here delivering discernibly human performances. When they’re just chatting on Gotham’s streets, it doesn’t feel like they’re just killing time until Hagen shapeshifts and slaughters again. Their rapport and individual turns are perfectly solid in their own right.

Props too to Watkins and cinematographer Rob Hardy for littering Clayface's world with various brightly colored neon lights. This quality drapes nighttime walks in green hues or urgent gazes into shop windows with yellow tints. Huzzah for not just falling back on various greys for this grim horror feature. On the other hand, composer Volker Bertelmann’s Clayface score is dreadful. Once more, he leans on blaring horns and uninspired ham-fisted music cues lending no specificity to the characters or frights. It all sounds too reminiscent of both his subpar All Quiet on the Western Front tracks and stereotypical Hans Zimmer scores. After delivering possibly the year's worst score with The Uprising, Bertelmann once more disappoints with his dreadful Clayface compositions.

Much like Hagen trying to keep his shapeshifting abilities and violent impulses in check, Clayface is a tormented movie. It generally looks sharp, the assembled performers are solid, and there’s even some nifty kills (including one involving a guy getting part of his spine ripped out). However, it also frustrates in other respects, including in leaving too much potential on the table as a gnarly body horror tale. Too often Clayface registers as a pastiche of superior frightfests rather than a spine-tingling exercise in the moment. Maybe they should’ve waited for original screenwriter Mike Flanagan to have an opening in his schedule so he could direct this one. At least then Clayface could’ve had more specificity in its bloodstream.

Being Heumann

First off, go watch the excellent 2020 documentary Crip Camp. What an extraordinary film that is! Secondly, in that title (chronicling disabled folks who bonded at Camp Jened, a New York summer camp built for disabled attendees), there's a story shared by iconic activist Judith Heumann about a burst of 70s activism where she and her disabled cohorts engaged in a sit-in protest of a federal building in San Francisco. This was in response to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 not being signed into law. This anecdote was rife with engrossing rebukes to the status quo as well as intersectional aid in the form of local Black Panther Party members and lesbians showing up to provide meals and aid to the protestors.

I always thought this was one of the coolest stories imaginable and perfect for a movie. CODA writer/director Siân Heder clearly thought so too, since she and co-writer Rebekah Taussig have brought this story to the silver screen via adapting Judith Heumann's memoir Being Heumann. The feature Being Heumann’s best moments certainly reflects this story's potency. As the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast hosts pointed out on their episode about Pride, American cinema isn't rife with movies about collectivist action or protest movements. Matewan and Barbara Kaplan documentaries, thankfully, exist, but they’re the exceptions, not the norms.

This retelling of Judith Heumann (portrayed here by Ruth Madeley) and other activists is another welcome refutation of this norm. Heder’s filmmaking thrives on leaning into the complexities of executing group protests. No marginalized group is a monolith, and disabled folks are no exception. A sequence chronicling a tense argument reflecting disparate ambitions for societal improvements from deaf and blind people epitomizes Being Heumann refusing to boil down its disabled characters to interchangeable caricatures. Emphasizing the variety amongst these protestors makes sequences depicting cooperation and folks collectively giving the middle finger to apathetic politicians extra fantastic.

Unfortunately, Being Heumann filters this story and these lives through frustratingly familiar impulses. Heder and cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay opt for standard, cramped framing, overly clean digital camerawork, and totally eschewing distinctive lighting. I yearned for scenes like a nighttime police raid on the protestors to be filmed with more visceral urgency. If you like uber-familiar medium shots of characters talking, you’ll be in Heaven. Francesco Le Metre's score is similarly derivative. His music cues are a hodgepodge of instrumentation and sounds cribbed from so many other dramas about civil rights activism in the 60s and 70s.

Judith Heumann and her fellow activists refused to assimilate or be silent. Being Heumann, meanwhile, resorts to unobtrusive and conventional imagery and orchestral music details.

On the other hand, Heder’s greatest asset from CODA (her deftness working with actors) thankfully returns here. Consistently strong performances litter Being Heumann, including Madeley’s outstanding lead turn. From the moment she first appears on-screen, Madeley infuses Heumann with transfixing IDGAF Brooklyn energy. Meanwhile, Madeline Delp, Antwan Tolliver, and D'Arcee Charington Neal all deliver star-making turns. Please, Hollywood, put them all in countless movies after this. The top-shelf casting means that the most low-key Being Heumann scenes are often its best. Particularly memorable is a third-act scene where disabled activists quietly share and laugh over various condescending comments able-bodied people keep throwing at them ("it's such a shame, you have such a pretty face!").

Being Heumann’s most rote images and storytelling impulses dilute the impact of a movie that needed more Molotov cocktail energy. What does work, though, are the riveting performances and most thoughtful explorations of communal activism. It’s no Crip Camp or Matewan, but noteworthy elements still materialize here.

Wicker

Loneliness. It's an all-consuming emotion that can make one do strange things. The Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman), the protagonist of Wicker, certainly knows that emotion well. In her village, which is all about tradition and marriage, her permanently single status is constantly joked about and commented on by people like the Tailor's Wife (Elizabeth Debicki). One day, loneliness drives that Fisherwoman to reach out to the Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage) with a request: "make me a husband." He accepts the challenge and proceeds to carve her a Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård).

Now the Fisherwoman has a man who truly loves her. Alas, their romance is a deviation from the village’s norms, especially in how Wicker Husband treats his spouse like a person, not an object. Folks like Tailor’s Wife quickly begin scheming to destroy this relationship.

Writer/directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (who're adapting the Ursula Willis text The Wicker Husband) imbue Wicker with a sensibility evoking Jacques Demy's Donkey Skin. Specifically, Wicker and Donkey Skin both feel like classical fairy tales that just happened to be inhabited by flesh-and-blood people. Wicker reinforces this aesthetic through welcome screenwriting details like refusing to bequeath the various characters’ proper names (they’re just Fisherwoman or Tailor’s Wife) and embracing old-timey verbiage.

This conviction to a vintage atmosphere works divinely in Wicker’s favor. The enterprise doesn’t come off as a sleazy exercise exhaustingly winking at the viewer. Instead, it’s a sincere world imbuing earnest humanity into the outlandish. Time that could’ve been spent going “well, that just happened” is instead dedicated to exploring Fisherwoman and Wicker Man as people. Plus, sincerity allows for lovely bonding moments between Wicker’s two leads. Watching them intimately dance or share raw conversations by a roaring fire delivers the most intoxicating and “aww”-inducing sequences.

To boot, Wicker’s also so beautifully filmed, an unsurprising feat given that The Brutalist cinematographer Lol Crawley lensed this feature. Everything looks tactile and warm on-screen, with that warmth infusing the proceedings with extra romance. Similarly impressive visually is the outstanding makeup work used on Skarsgård. I don’t know how they made his Wicker Man body look like it’s actually empty inside, but that feat alone astonishes. Sarah Rubano and the other makeup artists should take a bow for their work here.

All the luscious visual details (which also include terrific costumes from designers Tóth András Dániel and Godena-Juhász Attila) coalesce to amplify Wicker’s tremendous innate charms. Naturally, the always reliable Colman and Skarsgård are also excellent here. Sure, Wicker’s plot doesn’t necessarily go anywhere unprecedented or immensely subversive. However, what the film delivers is charm and sincerity. That extends to a delightfully concocted finale that could've been ripped straight out of an old-timey fairy tale. Crowdpleaser entertainment like this resonating as finely crafted rather than manipulative doesn’t come around every day.