Admin note:  Anyone who knows Joan and reads her reviews here in Syracuse knows that she is a notoriously tough critic - especially when it comes to horror movies.  This may be her best review of a horror movie in years, if not ever!  Her only complaint was length, and in a follow up phone call, she thanked me for making a horror movie with a good story and said she was going to watch it again - the highest of compliments!

'Clay' has promise,

but still needs shaping

Hollywood is wrong about many things, so many this column can't hold them all. But one thing about filmmaking it does have right: Horror films should clock in at a compact 90 minutes. Or at least not more than 105.

Ron Bonk makes the mistake of stretching "Clay," his first feature-length film since 1999, to two hours. Had he pared it down, it would be a horror flick worthy of a Hollywood release and not one that was intriguing but not sufficiently scary.

The title character is a young man who prowls the streets and pays homage to "my lord," the father he believes created him from mud. In his room, he keeps tiny clay figures and, following one of his killings, gives them burial. He thinks he has done his victims a favor because the time was right.

"My lord" denies Clay's charges of his dire deeds and seeks solace in the company of an 11-year-old girl whose parents are still wrapped up in grief over their son's death. He woos her company with lemonade, so he may be a pedophile. Bonk is clever at keeping that truth from his audience.

The most arresting sequences involve Irene, a senior citizen who hires Clay as a handyman and, due to his extra efforts, decides he is the reincarnation of her son who was killed in Vietnam.

Bonk has chosen his cast well. Wes Reid and Tom Minion score solidly as Clay and his father with Emma Koziara contributing a sweet portrait as the neglected child. Yet the finest acting is done by Peggy Bonesteel as the mother who fervently wants to believe Clay has come back to life as her son.

Where he goes awry is dragging out his tale. In many instances, the writer-director opts for arty visuals over his strong story content. It seems possible to this reviewer he could tighten his film without resort to re-shooting. After watching "Sarah Landan and the Paranormal Hour," it's clear Bonk has that filmmaker's movie trumped in almost every respect except length.