An Australian lawmaker is critical but stable after being apparently deliberately hit by a car

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian federal lawmaker remained in a hospital in a critical but stable condition, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday as he praised a barber who helped restrain the driver accused of deliberately hitting the lawmaker twice.

Helen Haines, a 65-year-old independent politician, was struck by a Toyota Land Cruiser SUV on Monday outside her office in her electorate in the city of Wangaratta in Victoria state. The 43-year-old driver, Brendan Nugent, from nearby Tarrawingee, remained in police custody on Tuesday.

The incident shocked Australians as political violence is rare here and politicians have always been accessible to the public. Most lawmakers are not accompanied by security officers and go about their work and personal lives on their own.

The suspect’s father, Rod Nugent, released a statement Tuesday describing Haines as a “deeply respected, valued and much loved member of our local community.”

“Helen has been our friend for more than 20 years and what happened to her yesterday is devastating and unfathomable,” the father said.

Albanese said he phoned local barber Ricky Jefferies, who had run from his store to help members of the public detain the suspect, to thank him on Tuesday for intervening.

“It’s a reminder that at the worst of times, we see the best of the Australian character,” Albanese said in Melbourne.

Jefferies had earlier told reporters he searched the driver’s pockets and removed a knife. Police confirmed a knife had been found. Jefferies also said he did not consider himself a hero.

“It was crazy," he said. “A lot of people got involved immediately and they didn't even check for danger. They just ran to help.”

Haines’s family released a statement expressing thanks for the “swift assistance of bystanders” as well as health workers and police.

Haines, who was first elected to Parliament in 2019 and had been reelected twice since, was initially taken to a hospital in Wangaratta, a city of 30,000 people. She was airlifted later on Monday to a hospital in the state capital, Melbourne, 236 kilometers (147 miles) away.

The Alfred Hospital didn't respond Tuesday to a request for comment on media reports that Haines had had a leg amputated.

Recent data has shown that threats of political violence have grown in Australia. The head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation spy agency, Mike Burgess, on Tuesday reiterated an earlier warning that politically motivated violence was a top security concern, along with espionage and foreign interference.

Police reported in 2025 that threats against parliamentarians had doubled over the past three years. Official data showed more than 1,000 such threats against politicians in the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum and Albanese spoke to media outlets Tuesday, urging their colleagues, reporters and the public to turn down the heat in increasingly fractious political debates. Many also said they hoped Australia’s easygoing culture of approachable politicians wouldn’t change.

Haines was not known for polarizing views. The daughter of dairy farmers and mother of three was a nurse, midwife and academic before entering politics, and advocated for rural health matters. She was initially elected in 2019 with a campaign focused on health equity, rural prosperity and climate action.

Albanese said eyewitnesses had reported the suspect passed Haines in his SUV as she stood by the trunk of her parked car. The SUV then turned and came back before the man allegedly drove into the politician, the prime minister said.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told Australian Broadcasting Corp., citing witness accounts, that the driver allegedly reversed and struck Haines a second time, pinning her against her car, after initially hitting her.

One of the bystanders who came to Haines' assistance, Cody Lepoidevin, told reporters he thought he was witnessing a hit-and-run when the SUV backed away after she was first struck.

But instead of fleeing the scene, Lepoidevin said the driver “then reversed and drove back into her.”

Elsewhere in the world, authorities have warned of growing threats to lawmakers. The United States has seen a rise in political violence over the past decade.

That includes the 2022 hammer assault on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, in California; the 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally during his presidential campaign as well as another on the president at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April; and the assassinations in 2025 of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah.

In Britain, killings of politicians have also prompted bolstered security. Labour lawmaker Jo Cox was shot and stabbed in 2016 by a far-right extremist, while Conservative David Amess was stabbed in 2021 by an attacker inspired by the militant Islamic State group.

In July, the former British politician and reality TV contestant Ann Widdecombe was found beaten to death with a hammer at her home. A man has been charged with murder and terrorism-related offenses.

Graham-McLay reported from Wellington, New Zealand.

A church sign advertising a vigil for independent member of parliament Helen Haines at the Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral in Wangaratta, Australia, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. (James Ross/AAP Image via AP)

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, second right, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, third left, Victorian Premier Ben Carroll, Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police Mike Bush, left, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett, obscured, and Victorian Police Minister Paul Edbrooke, right, hold a meeting following the attack on federal independent member of parliament, Helen Haines in Wangaratta, at the Commonwealth Offices in Melbourne, Australia, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. (Con Chronis/AAP Image via AP)

Tributes and flowers are placed outside the electoral office for independent member of parliament Helen Haines in Wangaratta, Australia, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. (James Ross/AAPImage via AP)

People line up to light a candle during a vigil for independent federal member of parliament, Helen Haines at the Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral in Wangaratta, Australia, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. (James Ross/AAP Image via AP)

A woman delivers flowers at the electoral office of independent member of parliament, Helen Haines, in Wangaratta, Australia, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. (James Ross/AAP Image via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — The dominant movie genres of the past decade, superhero films and horror, have usually stayed, like bashful teenagers on the dance floor, on separate sides of the multiplex.

But when James Gunn and Peter Safran were plotting the projects with which they wanted to launch their era of DC Studios, writer-director Mike Flanagan came in with a pitch that would fuse both genres.

Neither Safran nor Gunn were looking for a standalone movie about Clayface, a lesser-known villain from the Batman comics. But they were won over by Flanagan’s vision, which eventually became a script by Flanagan and Hossein Amini.

“It fit within the broader framework of how James and I saw the broad spectrum of film and television shows we want to make,” says Safran. “But it really was Mike Flanagan’s passion and pitch. You always look for volunteers and not recruits.”

Not many studios would push “Clayface” to the front of the pack, but Gunn, who started in horror, and Safran, who helped launch “The Conjuring” franchise, made “Clayface” — with James Watkins eventually coming on to direct — part of their first wave of DCU films, following “Superman” and “Supergirl.”

“Clayface” is a darker detour for DC. And, if it proves successful, it just might open up a darker frontier for comic book movies.

“From the get-go, this was not designed to be a traditional superhero movie,” Safran says. “It was always supposed to be a character-driven story that uses the DC mythology. If you took the DC elements out of it, it would just be a great horror movie.”

That makes “Clayface” something unusual in the normally calculated realm of superhero movies. It’s R-rated. It’s modestly budgeted at $40 million. And it stars the relatively unknown Tom Rhys Harries as a little-known DC villain.

“A lot of people wouldn’t necessarily know who Clayface is, but they wouldn’t need to,” says Watkins, the Welsh filmmaker of “Speak No Evil” and “The Woman in Black.” “It’s its own movie.”

That, Safran says, is by design. He and Gunn have emphasized filmmaker-first projects at DC, carving a more idiosyncratic, multigenre path that has won them fans but also added some degree of risk.

“Clayface,” which opens in theaters Oct. 22, will debut shortly after Skydance and David Ellison’s takeover of Warner Bros. Ellison is keeping Gunn and Safran to lead DC, even though they’re coming off a misfire in the box-office disappointment of “Supergirl.” That puts more pressure on “Clayface” to perform.

“If you look at the cumulative choices that we’ve made, I think it’s pretty clear we’re trying to do things differently,” says Safran. “Not everything is going to work. The pressure we feel for ‘Clayface’ is honestly the pressure we feel for everything we put into the world.”

There have been a few movies to meld horror and superheroes together, including Wes Craven’s “Swamp Thing” (1982), Sam Raimi’s “Darkman” (1990) and “Brightburn” (2019), a sinister twist on the “Superman” origin story that Gunn produced.

But Clayface, a Batman villain created in 1940 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, is still an unlikely character to put center stage. In the comics, he began as Basil Karlo, a B-list actor who, furious that he wasn’t cast in a horror remake he had previously starred in, wears the movie’s Clayface costume to kill the film's actors.

Some fan skepticism has followed “Clayface.” Last week, Gunn defended the choice on the social media platform Threads after a user asked, “Who the (expletive) asked for a ‘Clayface’ movie?”

Gunn replied: “Although it may seem like it, Hollywood isn’t a place where the only way to make a movie is the public voting on what IP they want to see that they’ve seen countless times before.”

Watkins’ film, taking inspiration from the two-part episode “Feat of Clay” from “Batman: The Animated Series,” twists the original Clayface story slightly. Rising movie star Matt Hagen (Harries) is disfigured by a mob boss (Eddie Marsan) and rapidly falls out of Hollywood. After numerous unsuccessful surgeries, he resorts to an experimental process created by the scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) that uses an untested, claylike living organism to rehabilitate his face.

“Part of the joy was being surprised at what’s looking back at me in the mirror every day,” says Harries, smiling.

To a large degree, “Clayface” progresses as a character study, one of an actor whose livelihood falls away from him and whose attempts to get back on the red carpet turn increasingly dark. His journey, though, hinges less on vanity than on his relationship with Caitlyn.

“I was approaching it the whole time like: Matt thinks he’s in a romantic comedy,” says Harries. “The fulcrum of the whole thing is his relationship with Caitlyn Corr. Without that, you don’t get the propulsion for Matt to be doing what he decides he needs to.”

As “Clayface” devolves, Matt’s face and body increasingly shape-shift in chilling body horror transformations. That can include his own body changing or Matt taking the form of other characters around him. While CGI and visual effects were used, Watkins leaned into practical effects.

“I like horror when it’s most relatable, when it actually gets under the skin,” Watkins says.

In the third act of “Clayface,” that’s taken to body-changing extremes as Matt dons the appearance of those around him. Often, actors were swapping into scenes moment to moment with Harries.

“We’d often play a scene with Tom and then someone else would play the same scene,” says Watkins. “Sometimes Tom would copy them, sometimes they would copy Tom.”

If the superhero movie has sometimes been too rigidly formulaic, “Clayface” proves the genre has more elasticity than it's been shown to have. In “Clayface,” even the lead role was an ensemble piece.

“I won’t mention any actor’s name because it’s a bit of a spoiler,” Watkins says. “But one of the cast members was saying to me his son asked, ‘So who are you in the movie?’ And he said, ‘I’m Clayface.’”

Tom Rhys Harries poses for a portrait to promote the film "Clayface" on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Birdie Thompson/Invision/AP)

Tom Rhys Harries, left, and director James Watkins pose for a portrait to promote the film "Clayface" on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Birdie Thompson/Invision/AP)

Peter Safran, left, and James Gunn arrive at the premiere of "Clayface" on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, at the Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Director James Watkins, left, and Tom Rhys Harries pose for a portrait to promote the film "Clayface" on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Birdie Thompson/Invision/AP)