May
Directed by: Lucky McKee
Written by: Lucky McKee
Starring: Angela Bettis, Jeremy Sisto, Anna Faris
Release Date: February 7, 2003
Lucky McKee’s May (2003) is a haunting, darkly funny, and deeply unsettling portrait of loneliness and obsession. Angela Bettis delivers one of horror’s most heartbreaking performances in this tragic modern cult classic.
****and a half stars
A Lonely Girl and Her Doll
The pitch meeting for May could have gone something like, “It’s Carrie meets Dahmer.” But a film as wildly original and scabrously horrifying as Maydefies such a simplistic description. This debut from writer-director Lucky McKee is a terrifying portrait of sweet, sensitive madness — a slow-motion descent into horror that’s as emotional as it is grotesque.
Imagine Norman Bates trapped in the body of that painfully shy girl from high school who never talked to anyone, and you’ll get a vague idea of how strangely heartbreaking this film really is.
Angela Bettis plays May, a quiet veterinary assistant whose childhood was defined by isolation. Born with a lazy eye, she spent most of her youth ostracized, forming a disturbingly close bond with a doll her mother gave her — one she keeps sealed behind glass. It’s her only “friend,” until she meets Adam.
Love, Lust, and the Beauty of Body Parts
One day, May notices a handsome mechanic named Adam (Jeremy Sisto). But what fascinates her isn’t his face or his physique — it’s his hands. In a scene both tender and unsettling, May presses her cheek against his hand as he dozes off in a café. Instead of recoiling, Adam is intrigued. “You’re weird,” he tells her, “but I like weird things.” Famous last words.
At work, May’s co-worker Polly (Anna Faris) develops her own fascination with the shy outcast. Faris brings a surprising depth to Polly, a character who could have been pure comic relief or titillation in another horror film. Instead, McKee and Faris make her warm, flirty, and oddly sincere — a small spark of connection in May’s lonely world.
But as May’s relationships deepen, her sense of reality begins to unravel. Her fascination with “perfect parts” — Adam’s hands, Polly’s neck — begins to merge with her childhood obsession with her doll. Love curdles into something unspeakable.
A Horror Story with a Human Heart
May begins as a strange, sad “ugly duckling” story but soon morphs into something far darker. McKee’s screenplay lures you into a character study before turning the knife — literally. The descent from awkward romance to full-blown psychological horror unfolds slowly, allowing the audience to both fear and pity May.
McKee understands what makes horror truly disturbing — not the blood, but the empathy. Like Psycho or Jaws, he leaves much of the violence just off-screen, letting your imagination fill in the horror. And when the film finally reveals its hand (no pun intended), it’s devastating. The final scenes are both grotesque and tragically beautiful, the kind that make you squirm while wanting to look away.
Angela Bettis: Horror’s Most Overlooked Performance
Angela Bettis gives one of the most magnetic horror performances of the 2000s. She makes May fragile, funny, and heartbreakingly human, even as her actions spiral into the unimaginable. Bettis never lets May become a monster — she’s a wounded soul trying to build something beautiful out of all the wrong pieces.
Jeremy Sisto is charming and natural as Adam, a self-proclaimed weirdo who turns out to be far more conventional than he thinks. His fascination with horror movies and his own gory short film are ironic foreshadowing — he can play with darkness, but he can’t live in it.
Anna Faris, best known for her comedic work, surprises in one of her best early roles. Her chemistry with Bettis adds a sexual and emotional complexity that gives May its depth. McKee smartly avoids gratuitousness, focusing instead on May’s emotional unraveling rather than cheap titillation.
A Cult Classic of Compassion and Madness
Lucky McKee’s May is a modern cult classic — a film that’s both horrific and heartbreakingly sad. It’s about what happens when a lonely person reaches out for connection and finds only rejection.
This is a movie that makes you squirm, but it also makes you feel. McKee and Bettis created a character as iconic as Norman Bates — someone so devastatingly damaged that she’s impossible to forget. May is more than a horror movie; it’s a requiem for the lonely, the misunderstood, and the people who just wanted to be seen.
Even my jaded, horror-hardened self found May deeply disturbing — not because of what it shows, but because of what it understands about loneliness. It’s one of the rare horror films that makes you shiver with empathy.
Final Thoughts
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
May is not just scary — it’s sad, strange, and hauntingly human. Lucky McKee crafts a horror story that lingers, a meditation on obsession and alienation that crawls under your skin and refuses to leave.
