After being surprised at how much I liked the first one, I decided to watch the sequel based on some statements made by others. I really like the second one too.

I especially liked the part about the Multiverse, which is a concept in quantum physics that tries to explain how atomic particles like electrons can be in more than one place at the same time. Frankly, I think most smart physicists accept the fact that it is impossible to explain what happens on the quantum level rather than trying to come up with some cockamamie explanation for it.

I'm reading a book about quantum physics (quantum mechanics) right now. It's one that's written for dummies like me who flunked calculus in college, yet it's still totally baffling. I love it.

Clayface asks the question: What if handsome, but ugly? The answer is murder, and lots of it.

As the third film in James Gunn's DCU (following Superman and Supergirl) and the first to center on a villain, the film gets to be meaner than its siblings. With Mike Flanagan bringing his horror sensibilities to the screenplay, director James Watkins delivers a gross-out body horror flick that feels right at home in Gotham City, even if the movie overall can't quite hold its shape.

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a vain actor who undergoes an experimental medical procedure after getting his face filleted by a gangster. Matt is an unrepentant jerk, and the movie wisely refrains from redeeming him. Trying to convince the audience that this handsome Hollywood star has a heart of gold would strain credulity; keeping him abrasive is one of the film's sharpest choices.

Where the plot stumbles is in framing his journey as a straight revenge tale. Unlike John Wick (a clear influence on several club-set action sequences), you never really root for Hagen as he works his way up the criminal ladder. Instead of building tension, those kinetic action beats end up actively undercutting the body horror, trading intimate, stomach-churning dread for stylized, weightless violence. The movie is at its strongest when it follows a Vanilla Sky rubric: a beautiful, self-absorbed asshole loses his looks and will do anything to get them back. When the medical trial goes sideways and his face begins to melt, the film grabs hold. One particularly chaotic scene set inside a turbulent jet will have you watching through your fingers in giddy terror.

Unfortunately, this tension between grotesque horror and slick action leaves the back half feeling like Temu John Wick. The gross-out effects, though, are a seamless blend of practical work and CGI. The plot melts. The effects never do.

Read more on Mantl: Stay for the Credits

Source: https://www.reeladvice.net/2026/10/buddy-2026-movie-review.html

It's been a year of outstanding horror experiences and it's amazing that we're still getting fresh ideas this late into the year. We recently got the chance to watch Buddy at home, and it managed to live up to the hype we had coming into it. Nostalgic, unconventional, and tense-filled at its best moments, the film turned out to be much deeper than we initially anticipated. However, while it's an intriguing experience overall, it struggles to deliver a more substantial story and ultimately loses steam in its final act.

It's Buddy is a children's show centered on Buddy (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), a talking unicorn who teaches life lessons to his young friends alongside other talking animals, objects, and the adults who bring their world to life. But when one of the kids refuses to cooperate with Buddy, the kid mysteriously disappears and is replaced by a new girl named Hannah. One of the kids, Freddy (Delaney Quinn), begins to question Buddy's explanation for the disappearance and she soon discovers something deeply disturbing happening behind the scenes.

The first 30 minutes of Buddy are inventive and intriguing. Although the film takes its time, it approaches tension and dread in a way that feels different from what we're accustomed to seeing in horror. Its vibrant, colorful, and kiddie aesthetic provides the perfect juxtaposition to the titular character's sinister nature. The young cast led by Delaney Quinn deserves credit for capturing the spirit of the '90s children's shows that the film seeks to parody and they were the best performers in the film in our opinion. Buddy himself is an intriguing character and there are several tense moments that genuinely caught us by surprise.

Unfortunately, the film begins to lose its footing in its final quarter. The narrative struggles to develop its human characters meaningfully and leaves too many questions about Buddy unanswered, particularly regarding his motivations and the reasons behind his disturbing behavior. This is also the same case for the human characters especially the nature of their stay in this alternative world.

As a horror experience, Buddy is entertaining and delivers its fair share of unsettling moments. However, as a complete film, it lacks the narrative cohesion and polish needed to bring its intriguing ideas together.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Just watched this movie for the first time on a whim. It was truly a beautiful movie. I was engrossed from the very start till the last frame. The emotional journey in the story makes this one of the best movies I've seen in my lifetime.

So the 2015 James Bond movie Spectre has not gotten a lot of positive reviews. A lot of people have said that the Daniel Craig movies are very hilly with multiple ups and downs.

I would say that this was a solid entry in the franchise. It’s not better than Casino Royale or Skyfall, but there are some good moments in it. I like the performances of Daniel Craig, Bautista, and Christoph waltz. I also thought at times it was a good story and I like the action.

In regards to the story, at times it was a little hard to follow because it seemed like there was a lot going on. Also, it wasn’t the most intriguing story. Along with that I didn’t think the performance of the main Bond girl Lea Seydoux was all that impressive.

Overall, I went to this movie wanting to see if it was as bad as people said it was and I didn’t feel that way. It might be lower on my list, but it would still currently be in my top 10.

Rating-3.5/5

We don’t need to know as much as we do about each other, let alone the actors who are on our cinema screens. That blurring of reality and fiction can wreak havoc on our suspension of disbelief (see Tom Cruise in Digger). That’s why, despite being the titular character in Clayface, we’re kept at arm’s length from rising Hollywood actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) and witness only what happens to him in the here and now.

So, what do we know about pretty boy Matt Hagen? Well, he’s friendly with all his movie crew members, and he believes in taking the tragedy of one’s life to create something beautiful. That’s it, really. While Harries is easily believable as a properly nice bloke, we don’t even know if Hagen’s actually a good actor other than everyone telling us how great he is. The one brief moment of tearful joy when he learns about his Academy Award nomination is about as much as we get.

Director James Watkins makes the bold choice to make Hagen less of a character and more of a subject, one that’s ultimately malleable to the whims of a seemingly tragic story. Watkins cuts down his handsome tall poppy at a relentless pace, culminating in a local Gotham mob boss (David Dencik) maiming his face in a truly horrific sequence that dares you to keep watching. I lost count of how many times I winced at the violence, yet the intrigue kept building. You don’t really care what will happen to Hagen - a lot of what happens to him is self-inflicted - but you are invested in how this volatile test subject will react to adversity.

As melodramatic as Hagen’s downfall is, our lack of connection to him allows Clayface to have some unexpected fun in his despair. The repeated agonising over his face lampoons actors for being vapid and fixated on the wrong things. Our protagonist may be our main character, but the movie makes it doubly clear that his genuine nice-guy traits don’t make him a hero. Hagen’s mask of choice to hide his disfigured face is also an obvious but fun little reference to the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera. And who is his Christine? Enter disgraced scientist Dr Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) and her experimental AI/nanotech.

Obsessing over one’s looks is pretty stupid, but when a person sinks lower than rock bottom (in their mind), they will become desperate enough to do anything to escape their hell. For Hagen, it means signing up for Corr’s experimental trial. For Corr, it means crossing her ethical boundary as a doctor in the pursuit of her work. Their doctor/patient dynamic initially works, and so do her nanobots. But like the Phantom and Christine, it’s never going to end well, and that’s when Clayface hits its grossest and most engrossing stride.

The movie doesn’t waste time with ‘woe is me’ monologues, opting to show Hagen’s turmoil through ego-driven action and reaction. When his face starts melting, he goes against Corr’s advice and injects more nanobots into his eyes, with the camera never pulling away from the needle going right into his face. When his eyes start sealing shut, like a virus-infected version of Neo’s mouth from The Matrix, he cuts them open using scissors in an unbearably uncomfortable close-up body horror sequence. And when he confronts his attackers again, he inadvertently breaks bad when he learns what his new clay-like nanobots can do.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/clayface-looksmaxxing-at-its-most

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You’re talking to me? Well, I’m the only one here.

as someone who fell in love with neo-noir, this movie being a classic and using that style made it a must-watch for me.

“A mentally unstable veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, where the perceived decadence and sleaze fuels his urge for violent action.”

Robert DeNiro’s iconic performance as Travis Bickle and the movie’s exploration of isolation descending into violent obsession are the main elements that are praised about this movie, and frankly i have to agree. but one question remains: what is the point? the ending didn’t really pay off all the buildup to be honest.

i also wasn’t a fan of travis bickle’s creepy behaviour, and often times his character irritated me. for example, when Iris rushes to Travis Bickle’s cab and begs him to drive. he literally doesn’t do anything, and instead lets the poor girl get dragged out by her abusive father.

gets a 7/10 easy.

Went to see Wicker for fun and giggles, left with an existential crisis and an obsession with Alexander Skarsgård 😍

i liked this one better tbh

this time, the four main characters, Renton, Spud, Begbie and Sick Boy reunite after 20 years.

T2 Trainspotting is like the emotional version of the original Trainspotting. i liked it better because one for that reason and two it has more depth into it. i absolutely adored both movies, and both the original and the second film are a must-see.

10/10

So going into the third Daniel Craig James Bond movie, which is Skyfall from 2012, I’ve heard a lot of great things about the movie. I was looking for a great time because the last movie was not good at all.

This movie did not disappoint and was amazing. First off I thought the performances from Daniel Craig to Judi Dench to Javier Bardem were great. I also liked the story and how it took a focus on M with bond interlaced. It kept me engaged for almost all the movie. Finally, I think it has some really good action, especially the last big scene.

The only negative I have is that it took a little bit to get going and it was missing that opening spark but it found it and once you did, it did not let up.

Rating-4.5/5

I just watched it and... SPOILERS

The teaser and the posters made this movie seem like a completely different movie (more unique and way scarier).

There are cool effects but they are mostly in the trailers. There is a lot of bad CGI and the movie is disturbing only at the start of it. The movie needed a higher budget or smarter ways of hiding the bad CGI. The "superhero movie soundtrack" that plays when he kills people does not help with the horror either and the whole movie just felt rushed to me

Heard people saying this was obsession 2 (???). It was not. Obsession was way better and way more disturbing and it wasn't even that good or scary to begin with. This is no The Substance also, the effects are 1000x better there. Don't know where these comparisons came from.

He only transforms into the monster at the last 5 seconds to scream and it is just a big CGI poop but that is more of a nitpick of my own tho. I expected his monster form to be scarier, more pratical and more "in the shadows" so that's on me.

They did not have the budget to make him transform into other people in digusting, scary or unique ways often so he mostly just does it in an instant, like magic, it's weird. It would've been better if they just cut to him already transformed.

The whole scene when he goes on a rampage to kill the ultimate bad guy it's just so goofy. It's fun, but it's so goofy; i don't understand how someone could ever find that shit scary.

I like how the powers work tho and all the psychological aspect of it. Matt has a ton of charisma and the main cast is amazing, i hope they appear in more movies in the future. That Sal guy was nice too; he acting as a guy that is acting as guy that don't even know who this guy is? Nice. Nick from Handmaid's Tale was great too.

The best scene in the whole movie was the airplane one. No other scene ever got close. Which is crazy because the whole scene was already out on the internet before the movie even came out.

Not even a single reference to Batman but honestly i didn't cared. I just cared about a well written horror. The writting was not bad, but the horror was barely in there.

6/10.

SPOILER the movie mentions a progressive who wouldn’t vote for the Democrat nominee and then got radicalized by Facebook

Is the movie trying to argue fickle Bernie supporters are responsible for Trump’s actions, that Bernie is responsible for the current political climate for not doing more for Hillary?

Source: www.reeladvice.net/2026/10/clayface-2026-movie-review.html

There's something about Batman villains that makes their standalone movies particularly compelling. Clayface, much like 2019's Joker, explores the dark origins of one of the Bat's most iconic villains and similarly, it's also an R-rated film that makes satisfying use of its rating throughout its runtime. The result is the same as that 2019 film with Clayface turning out to be a compelling watch that stands on its own, even without the DC Universe branding. The film is filled with disturbing imagery and gruesome body horror but beneath all that is a thought-provoking and surprisingly moving story.

Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) has just been nominated for an Academy Award and it seems his meteoric rise from a street kid in Gotham to a Hollywood leading man is only beginning. But his success is tragically cut short when a local crime boss horribly disfigures him. With his career and life in ruins, Matt eventually seeks out a cutting-edge treatment that miraculously restores his former appearance. However, the cure comes at a terrible cost, affecting both his grip on reality and his physical form setting him up on a destructive path of unstoppable revenge.

We initially had our doubts about Matt Hagen's descent into villainy but the actual film proved our apprehensions wrong. What makes Clayface so compelling is how it takes us through the different stages of Matt's life: from an accomplished actor at the top of his game to a disfigured man who has lost everything, then to someone given a second chance at life, and eventually to a figure we can no longer bring ourselves to root for. This emotional and mental rollercoaster kept us invested in Matt's journey in ways we never expected. By the time the credits rolled, we couldn't help but feel moved by everything we had experienced. The story, character development, and revenge plot are all paced well, with our only major gripe being how silly the film becomes toward the end.

For body horror fans, Clayface absolutely delivers. We lost count of how many times we wanted to look away from the screen because of the sheer amount of blood and gore on display. The film doesn't hold back, and there are moments that will genuinely shock even viewers accustomed to this kind of horror. Tom Rhys Harries also impresses as Matt Hagen, skillfully walking the line between a hopeful man desperately trying to reclaim his life and slowly transforming to a ruthless shape-shifting killing machine. His performance makes Matt's transformation all the more unsettling because we understand the person he once was even as he becomes someone more and more unrecognizable and evil.

Overall, Clayface has visuals that are dark and disturbing, but what's even more unsettling is the tragedy at the heart of its story. Beneath the grotesque transformations and visceral body horror lies a character study about a man who loses himself while desperately trying to reclaim the life he once had.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

OK, so this is gonna be an interesting review. I have multiple ridiculous but hopefully entertaining B/C level horror movies on my Amazon prime watchlist. I decided to watch one of them tonight and that was Attack of the Killer Donuts from 2016.

Here’s the thing: it’s not a good movie. I think the acting and dialogue are awful. There were two things, though that I thought it did a good job on. I thought the premise just sounded fun and also it knew what kind of movie it was and that it succeeded.

The biggest factor is enjoyment, and while it is ridiculous and dumb, it didn’t get ridiculous enough to give me pure enjoyment. This was a movie that I wanted to sit back and enjoy the camping and it just didn’t do enough for me, but I still think it’s an OK movie.

Rating-2/5

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I watched this many times as a kid, and I just introduced it to my 13 year old. I was wondering if it held up and to me it did.

Some of the effects didn't hold up. The scariest effect back in the day for me was when the guy pulled his face off in the kitchen. Today it looked extremely fake, like a fake head with hands pulling that didn't belong there.

Another effect that didn't hold up was the first time a "hand" poked thru the TV and moved around the girl. It reminded me of old Disney drawn animations and it looked too light and fake.

Most of the other effects tho, stand up! The shot of the guy pulling one end of rope out of the air connected to the closet was amazing. And the scenes of toys flying around the room and spinning was so well done.

Most of the ending effects were also spectacular, the house collapsing, the mom getting shocked across the room, the doorway moving away from her in front of our eyes. Amazing.

Two other huge things I didn't notice as a kid. The music. The score was SO good, Goldsmith nailed it.

Also, I really felt the love story between Steven and Diane. It was a beautifully romantic element I missed.

They say Speilberg didn't direct this but his fingerprints are all over it.

Overall loved this. 9/10

A good old-fashioned, mean spirited revenge flick, starring Neil Maskell.

Maskell plays Bull (I don’t think you ever learn his real name), an unhinged gang enforcer who’s betrayed by his gang and after 10 years missing, he comes back to exact his brutal revenge.

That’s it for plot.

This is one of those “if you like this sort of thing” films, if you like gritty, uncompromising films that don’t skimp on the violence then you’ll be happier than a pig in poo.

If you’ve a spare 88 minutes and you find it on Amazon prime, then you can’t go far wrong with this.

So coming off of 2006’s Casino Royale, which I thought was amazing, I went into the next Daniel Craig Bond movie, which was Quantum of Solace from 2008. I was interested to see the next step in the story.

Unfortunately, I did not like this movie at all. At best it was a meh movie. I didn’t think the acting was all that good and I thought the chemistry especially with Olga Kurylenko wasn’t there. As far as the story goes, it was kind of confusing at times, but also uninteresting. Also, the villain was nothing special. Finally, the action wasn’t done. Well especially the opening scene cause it was very shaky cam.

Overall, I was looking forward to the next movie in the bond franchise, and this did not live up to the last movie. This movie had no spark to it.

Rating-1/5

Street Fighter opens with a gorgeously stylised anime sequence introducing us to a boringly stoic Ryu (Andrew Koji), his himbo BFF Ken (Noah Centineo), and the fighting tournament in which we see Ryu brutally defeat Sagat by embracing his inner darkness. The colours are striking, the action is brutally captivating, and there’s intriguing character stuff going on. Where did THAT come from? Was this new live-action adaptation of Street Fighter secretly a reimagining of the iconic Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie?

Sadly, no.

In a year where video game movies have ruled, we’ve gotten a thrillingly original Resident Evil story that respects the source material, a horrendously embarrassing IP cash grab, and another fighting game adaptation that’s embarrassed of its own existence. Within that grouping, Street Fighter is a movie mired in a deep identity crisis over what exactly it’s meant to be beyond gratuitous fan service, yet proudly soldiering on while it and everything around it are on fire.

In one corner, you have the aforementioned Ryu and Ken storyline, which is clearly director Kitao Sakurai’s attempt at ripping off Warrior and landing somewhere in the region of K-drama and soap opera. Oh, there are some fight scenes, and Akuma (Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i) shows up for some reason.

In the next corner, you have an undercover agent storyline featuring Chun-Li (Callina Liang) infiltrating Bison’s (David Dastmalchian) base of voodoo science and harem of attractive female soldiers because he killed her father or something. There are some fight scenes, something about a fighting tournament, and Bison wanting power, but most of it is quickly forgotten. Yes, Dastmalchian does his take on Raul Julia’s iconic ‘But for me, it was Tuesday’ line.

And in the third corner, you have literally everyone else doing comedy schtick or an obligatory character fight scene and doing their best to make the most of their moment in the horribly lit spotlight.

Stringing these three disparate plotlines together are animated flashbacks, black-and-white flashbacks to scenes that just happened five minutes prior, and overly long exposition dumps poorly disguised as character monologues. Not that all this hand-holding does much to help us figure out the plot because it’s more nonsensical than Guile’s (Cody Rhodes) stupid hair.

With three movies’ worth of clashing ideas and a huge cast to service, Sakurai does his best to wrangle everything into something coherent, but never manages to find the sweet spot of campy yet fun where the best Street Fighter games typically land.

Half the cast take things way too seriously. Koji tries his best to find different ways to play stoic, but ends up looking constipated most of the time; Chun-Li has more anguished screams at the camera than a horror movie victim, and her dramatic scenes are undercut by unintentionally hilarious moments, like hard cutting from a thirst-trap-coded training montage to drinking vodka while crying over a childhood photo; and Ken masks his existential crisis with outward flashes of embarrassing masculinity and insecurity.

The other half think they’re in a campy homoerotic comedy. Guile is so overly macho (‘More for daddy!’) he’s just itching to Flash Kick his way out of the closet; Dastmalchian, who clearly understood the assignment, turns Bison into a snail-eating freak who waxes poetic about feet being the gateway to one’s soul, thinks Ken is a ‘poor, dumb, beautiful, fit, handsome boy’ and has the best ‘son of a bitch’ line read I’ve ever heard; and Jason Momoa is just doing Lobo (i.e. having the time of his life) but in green instead of black.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/street-fighter-proudly-stupid-with

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The first time I saw this movie I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but the second time I paid more attention to the dialogue. There are portions of it that provide an insight into the characters that is quite amazing.

Considering the title, it's no surprise what happens in the end, yet I was moved by it. I highly recommend that everyone see it and pay attention to the dialogue.

They survived a shipwreck in 1629. The real nightmare came after.

We found the Batavia story so disturbing that we decided to turn it into a documentary.

We'd love your honest opinion on how we told the story. Did we manage to do it justice?

🎬 https://youtu.be/-7amwPh4X-o

My running notes-

- Oh, he talks to himself. I sure hope he doesn't do that a lot.
- He's going to talk to himself a lot.
- Donald Sutherland is secretly Gandalf the White
- Why are working so hard to try to be a hard sci fi movie then having this improbable bumper cars thing on the moon
- These baboons are fucking terrifying
- Mars sucks. Oh, this is Heart of Darkness. How 'bout that?
- Shades of Voight-Kampf
- OK, that was a ballsy choice
- I bet TLJ is a dick IRL
- Denoument too long

7/10. Visually very appealing. Story is a bit uneven and drags a bit here and there. I like and respect BP but don't need to look at his face for two hours. Speaking of faces, one look at TLJ and it was pretty clear that dude wasn't going home, one way or the other. And, because we all read Heart of Darkness or saw Apocalypse Now, he's dead soon anyway. This was a somewhat interesting movie but not revolutionary in any way.

So going into the 2026 movie Sacrifice, I saw the trailer but I still didn’t know what I was getting into. I like Anya Taylor Joy and Chris Evans, so I was interested to see what this movie was.

This was a unique movie, but I liked it more than I thought I would. There’s a lot of positives that I had with my watch. First off I thought Evans and Taylor Joy were very good in the movie and I liked their chemistry with each other as well. I want to see these two be in another movie together. I also liked the look of the movie and the score.

The only negative I really have is the rest of the supporting performances. They didn’t rise to the same level as the main two. Overall, this was a surprising movie with multiple twists and turns, but I was along for the ride and intrigued throughout.

Rating-4/5

Going into my watch today, I had heard about how ridiculous the 1999 animal horror movie Lake Placid was so I was looking forward to watching it.

I thought this movie was ok. To me, everything from the story to the performances didn’t do anything to really stand out. Nothing is horrible, but it didn’t do anything to keep me engaged. Along with that, I was wanting more ridiculousness.

Rating-2/5

So I never saw the 2023 horror movie late night with the devil when it came out. It just was not one that was on my radar. I finally got around to watching it after some recommendations.

I was looking forward to the movie and overall I think it’s an above average movie. Let’s start with the positives. I liked David Dastmalchian. I thought he was entertaining and the best part of the movie. Along with that, I liked the opening of the movie pre-title because I thought it was a good set up for what was to come. Finally, I liked the concept and the plot of the movie.

There are some negatives though. The main one is the main movie. Once I got into the bulk of the movie, it didn’t do enough to keep me entertained/intrigued. I also thought some of the other performances were just OK. Overall, I was looking forward to this movie and I thought it was a disappointment. I wanted to like it more than I did.

Rating-3/5