29/10/2026

LYFE THURSDAY | OCT 29, 2026

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Clayface gets under skin of superhero genre S UPERHERO cinema has flirted with the grotesque before, but rarely with the level of blood-soaked o New DC Studio film featuring Batman rogue delves into disturbing body horror

Clayface tells the story of an actor that ends up being part of Batman’s rogues gallery. – IMDBPIC

commitment seen in Clayface , DC Studios’s new film from the Batman universe. At a time when the superhero genre is struggling to excite audiences, DC’s shape-shifting Batman supervillain aims for something uniquely visceral. “I don’t want just clockwork scares, jump scares, I don’t want mechanical scares, I want scares that get under people’s skin. “Body horror is possibly one of the most relatable scares, because we all have fears for what can go wrong with our bodies,” British director James Watkins told AFP. Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries, 36, who plays rising film star Matt Hagen whose face is horrifically disfigured by a mob boss and sets out to wreak ACTORS and Alexander Skarsgard have both played eccentric characters before, but say their new film, in which Skarsgard transforms into an Adonis woven from wicker, is “in quirkiness levels, quite high”. In Wicker , an absurdist romantic comedy set in a medieval village, Colman portrays an outcast known as the Fisherwoman who longs for a companion. She approaches a basket weaver, played by Peter Dinklage, who creates her a supernatural husband. Initially jeered, the wicker man surprises the Fisherwoman and the judgemental villagers with his sensitivity and skills, slowly turning life in the conservative community upside down. “I’d just never seen anything like that before. It was totally original,” said Colman, who won an Oscar for her performance in 2018’s The Favourite . It took artists at the Weta Workshop in New Zealand around 18 months to design Skarsgard’s suit. The Stockholm-based actor witnessed the costume coming to life over e-mails and video calls before trying it on some two weeks before shooting began in Budapest. “That was definitely a moment I’ll never forget, when I got to step into him. “I really want the audience to know that it was practical and that it wasn’t CGI... It was a masterpiece,” Skarsgard said. Skarsgard credited the team for shortening the costume and make-up application process from an initial “quite a few hours” to under two hours. Acting in it was a learning curve, he said, and required accentuated movements. “It had different pieces, elements Olivia Colman

prosthetics, Harries admitted to ripping them off at the end of each shoot and getting scolded by the makeup team. “Somewhere, there’s a costume store, which has like clumps of my face in (the) pockets,” he joked. The same commitment to texture shaped the setting of the film in northern Liverpool, which morphs into Gotham City. “When you’re alongside the Mersey and the rain’s coming in and it’s heavy atmospherics, you just feel it. “It creates a vibe, a mood, but you can’t create that on a soundstage,” Watkins said. It is a philosophy he extends to

revenge, sees the character as a natural fit for the genre. “Clayface as a character is sort of like uniquely suited to the body horror genre,” he said. It was his first foray into horror, but he treated the challenge as any other form of acting, although he spent hours in the makeup chair ahead of some shoots. “Where I could shoot something with a prosthetic, often we would do that,” Watkins said, rather than using visual effects. “If you need to augment it, you’ve got a very strong base. But also by shooting it for real, you’ve got real-time reactions from everybody.” Impatient to be free of the

the industry’s anxieties about artificial intelligence. “I still feel that conversations I

have with people are with people because the films come down to human emotion,” he insisted.

John Cena hits gas in Matchbox JOHN Cena spent much of his childhood playing with Matchbox cars, so when the chance came to hit the gas in Matchbox: The Movie , he jumped behind the wheel.

Alexander Skarsgard dons ‘masterpiece’ woven costume in offbeat Wicker

The action-comedy film, released recently on Apple TV, follows the reunion of a group of childhood friends – a gathering that veers unexpectedly when they are caught in the middle of a wild mission to recover a nuclear warhead. Starring Cena, Jessica Biel, Arturo Castro, Sam Richardson and Teyonah Parris, the movie directed by Sam Hargrave melds high-octane scenes with more humorous moments. It also taps into nostalgia for the toy cars, which originated after English engineer Jack Odell designed the first model to comply with a 1952 British school rule requiring toys to fit inside a matchbox. “If you have childhood memories like me of Matchbox, I think you’re going to appreciate all the Easter eggs in there. And if you don’t know anything about Matchbox or the Mattel franchise, you’re going to sit down and really enjoy this movie,” Cena said to journalists. The action scenes proved difficult for Cena and his co-star Biel. Training focused more on learning to move in new ways and doing fight scenes with greater fluidity, Cena said. And, of course, to “gain the courage to jump off a building,” he added. Adrenaline rush Biel said it was the driving that propelled her out of her comfort zone. “I’ve never learned how to spin a car, you know, in a 180 and stop it on a mark,“ she said. The experience proved an adrenaline rush, Biel added. She said: “(Driving) was the

A poster for the film. – IMDBPIC

coolest stuff I got to do. “Going 60 plus miles an hour on a freeway with a bunch of camera cars everywhere, and guys on motorcycles and gals in giant semis... There was a really major sense of being safe for everyone else’s sake.” Given the demanding action scenes, both actors said the direction of Hargrave was crucial. The filmmaker is known for his stunt work and coordination on Marvel Cinematic Universe films. “He was such a big draw to this movie because of his experience and his expertise in the stunt world, and how he likes to do things practically,“ Biel said. For the actors, it was also an opportunity to reflect on the importance of friendship and to share stories from behind the wheel. Cena, who is himself a car collector, recounted spending US$825,000 (RM3.4 million) trying to fix the most significant car purchases of his life – “a fake Lamborghini” – that he had bought for cheap. But he learnt a valuable life lesson. He said: “If you think it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.”– AFP

Colman (left) and Skarsgard attend a premiere for Wicker in Los Angeles, California. – REUTERSPIC

“The position of women, which is getting challenged in certain quarters, alarmingly so, and it’s just a lovely comment on an equal relationship and kindness and the patriarchy and feminism. It’s also enormous escapism, which is also really important at this time,” said Colman. “It’s a commentary on our society and the world we live in, but hopefully done in a very entertaining way,” added Skarsgard Wicker began its global cinematic roll-out recently. – Reuters

to it, glued to my face, and little added lips and eyelashes made out of flax and hair. “It definitely didn’t feel very organic because you had to really exaggerate everything,” he said. The film is adapted from Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story The Wicker Husband . Elizabeth Debicki plays the Tailor’s Wife, who takes the lead in a campaign against the Fisherwoman and her unconventional husband. “There are some lessons in the film that are done very gently.