May (2003)
Directed by Lucky McKee
Written by Lucky McKee
Starring Anna Faris, Angela Bettis, Jeremy Sisto
Release February 7th, 2003
Published June 10th, 2003
The pitch meeting for the movie May could have gone something like "It's Carrie meets Dahmer". But a film as wildly original and scabrously horrifying as May defies such a simplistic description. This horror film from newcomer Lucky McKee is a terrifying portrait of sweet, sensitive madness. Imagine Norman Bates in the body of that gawky shy chick who never talked to anyone in high school and you will get a vague idea of how sickly strange and twisted this movie really is.
Angela Bettis is May, a shy, seemingly innocent veterinary assistant. As a child, May had a lazy eye that made her an outcast throughout her school years. Her outcast status caused her to develop a rather unhealthy attachment to a doll her mother gave her. A doll she cannot remove from a glass case.
While off work one day, May comes across a good-looking mechanic named Adam (Jeremy Sisto). It is not Adam's face, butt or abs that attracts May but his hands. As Adam nods off in a coffee shop May sneaks up on him and indulges her hand fetish by pressing her cheek into his hand. He of course wakes up, and though slightly weirded out, is far more intrigued. As Adam professes, May is weird but he likes weird things. He has no idea.
Meanwhile at work, May's co-worker Polly (Anna Faris) has a similar attraction to the weird shy girl. Polly exudes sexuality with a number of rapturous stares and a couple funny double entendres. May's seeming innocence is an attraction that the voracious Polly can't resist even as May's behavior gets stranger and stranger.
May starts out like a perfectly normal ugly duckling story. Still, as the script, written by director Lucky McKee, presses forward, May's strange qualities melt into an exquisite madness that goes from unsettling to horrifying in slow, broad strokes of plot. McKee knows the best, most horrifying of all horrors is what the audience sees in its own head and like Jaws he leaves some of the film's gore off screen or slightly off to the side. That is, until the end when he drops a pair of bombshell scenes that will have you twisting in your seat and covering your eyes in classic horror movie fashion.
Angela Bettis is magnetic, she quickly earns our sympathy with her quirks and maintains it right up until things get really out of control.
Sisto brings charisma and charm to his character who purports to be strange in his own right with his love of Dario Argento horror films, and his own student film which features a loving couple and cannibalistic sex. When confronted with May's weirdness his iconoclast quickly becomes prudish and runs for the hills.
Anna Faris is surprising in a difficult role. In what would have been a throwaway role in any other horror film, she and McKee never let her character exist solely for titillation. The minor sex scene between May and Polly is sexy but smartly kept off screen so as not to distract from the real story.
I can't praise Lucky McKee enough. He and his star have created a character so devastatingly nuts that the Norman Bates allusion I made earlier is quite valid. This is a classic, cult horror character. Psychotic behavior has never been so sad and damn near sympathetic. I'm not saying I sympathized with May, but I could see moments throughout the film where one simple turn and the girl could have been normal. Even my jaded cynical approach to horror movies couldn't prevent this movie from freaking me out. I can't say I was scared, but May was pretty damn disturbing.
